


You Will Find that the World Has Changed

by slothy_girl



Series: beside me is where I want you to be [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Friendship, Hinted/Implied Dark Themes, M/M, Romance, Sequel, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 03:52:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slothy_girl/pseuds/slothy_girl
Summary: Some things are just meant to happen. Some things are not.





	You Will Find that the World Has Changed

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween everyone!! I managed to get my shit together just in time to post on my fave holiday whoo!
> 
> So, you may be thinking, why does she do this to herself? My response? Because I hate myself and live in Jacob/Newt hell, that’s why lol! I started this in January (so long ago omg), fell off the writing wagon for a few (more than a few) months, but I managed to hop back on thanks to all the wonderful people who commented such kind, amazing things on my two other Jacob/Newt fics, so this is for you, my precious gifts from above. 
> 
> Thank you, as always, to my amazing beta and friend Jennifer.
> 
> Please note: this picks up immediately after the epilogue in “In Love and War,” so I strongly suggest you read that first. Otherwise, you may find yourself somewhat (more than somewhat lol) confused. I also have not read the screenplay, and I’ve only seen the movie twice so please forgive any weird discrepancies or whatever. Either way, just to be totally clear, this is in no way a retelling. I changed too much for it to be anything like that lmao
> 
> Title from “The Houses of the Healing” from the LOTR soundtrack.
> 
> Enjoy~

-

You may not always end up where you thought you were going, but you will always end up where you are meant to be. –Anonymous

-

 

**| You Will Find that the World Has Changed |**

 

 

_New York City, December 1926_

 

Jacob never thought he would be stepping foot on American soil again, let alone the particular urban brand that New York City breeds in droves, thick and slopping and covered in cobbled concrete. Not after everything that happened the last time they were here, seven years ago.

He’s been hoping, of course, that he could return someday.

Maybe.

New York City had been his home for most of his thirty-four years of life after all. It’s not where he was born—no, that was Poland: the foreign land of his _babcia’s_ nostalgic stories, the distant place he’d spent so long imagining, having been packed up with his unenthusiastic parents and the tarnished silverware to New York by his _babcia_ before his teeth had even started growing in.

(As he’s seen for himself relatively recently, it’s as beautiful in the fall as his _babcia_ had always described it.)

The city isn’t necessarily home for him now—that title has long since been usurped by a certain freckled magizoologist and his magically enhanced suitcase, the one he spent three years meticulously tinkering with to fit their every need, the one that houses their beasts and things and everything they’ve built together (and Jesus Christ, how is this even his life? It’s been years, and Jacob still can’t believe it sometimes)—but the seven years they’ve been traveling together, while amazing and adventurous and everything he could have ever wanted, cannot quite overshadow the twenty-six odd years he spent existing in the City That Never Sleeps. It’s where he was raised, where he took his first real steps and said his first words. It’s where he learned to tie his shoes and make donuts and judge the purity of the cocaine he gave his father to alleviate his pain. He has twenty-six years of memories tied up in this place. Even the air, thick and smog infested, reminds him of long days on street corners selling newspapers to help make ends meet and longer nights fine tuning his baking skills under his _babcia’s_ careful eye.

His _babcia_ is buried here.

His parents too.

You never really forget your first home.

It takes a second for him to notice, but there’s a persistent niggling feeling in his chest. He turns to blink at Newt.

The taller man raises an eyebrow, his hand a gentle, fleeting touch on his elbow. “We should disembark before they leave with us still on board.”

“Yes, yes, sorry,” Jacob says. No use getting caught up in the nostalgia of the past.

He passes Pickett off to Newt and, once the stick beast has settled into hiding again with an irritated twitter, he hands Newt the case too. While it’s always accepted him as a permanent resident, only Newt can access the magic necessary for their discretion among the “muggles.” He double checks that their passports and papers are in order, listening with half an ear as Newt murmurs to the beasts already making their antsy impatience known in muffled rumblings and squeaks. The creatures however temporarily appeased, they finally descend into the chaos that is the city port.

All around them, people bustle about: a woman with an impressive hat throws herself into the arms of a group of tittering women; a finely dressed gent cautiously greets a woman with a severe expression; more than a few people move briskly through the crowd alone, weaving through the accumulated groups like lonely comets, blink and you miss them. Different accents and languages blend together, their volumes varying from soft, blurry hums to loud, raking decibels. He’s half afraid he might lose Newt in the fray of stumbling people, so he hooks his fingers in the fashionable strap at the small of his back. This notion is entirely unfounded, of course, because there’s no way for him to lose Newt.

Not anymore. Not really.

Magical binding and all, pretty convenient that, honestly.

They get in line to have their passports looked at and their luggage “checked,” and as always, Jacob waits with baited breath to see if the magic will take hold and disguise the suitcase for what it really is. They’ve had a couple close calls in their travels, some countries having heavier security than others, between the creatures attempting to escape and the illusion shattering under in-depth scrutiny. The closest was in Darwin, Australia two years ago. Jacob can’t look back on that incident without feeling both vaguely disturbed and incredibly fascinated, depending on the day.

One of the clasps flips open of its own volition and the customs official _notices_ it, narrowed eyes and everything, oh God, it _will_ be Australia all over again. He doesn’t know if he could take that considering their poor luck here in the past. His heart pounds, but he tamps it all down and closes the bond a bit, can see how his nerves are making Newt a little more nervous himself, and that’s not helpful. Not helpful at all. And Newt thinks _he’s_ the steady one in this relationship.

“Really must get that fixed,” Newt says, closing the clasp and flicking the special “muggle” tab in a practiced motion as he sets the case on the examining table.

But the magic holds, even as the man pushes and prods at the illusion or, well, the not illusion. Jacob’s never really understood how it works, no matter how many times or how many ways Newt explains it. As far as he can tell, the clothes and such disappear into some sort of pocket dimension or something, sort of like how the biomes are separated from each other with a few well-placed partitions, spelled to expand out into a dimension that only exists within that specific biome, each one simultaneously existing but only visibly in existence when you’re actually there to see it.

Agh. Thinking that way gives him a headache though, so, yeah, no, it’s okay. He doesn’t have to fully understand it, as long as it works. Newt can understand it for the both of them.

“Welcome to New York,” the customs official finally grunts.

Jacob heaves a breath of relief, plastering on an easy smile when the man gives him, his passport, and his empty hands a suspicious look from under his thick brow line. They really should get another suitcase, a normal one, so it doesn’t look so strange for two men to be traveling together as they do. But then again, it does seem like a waste of resources when everything they own between them is safely ensconced in the one suitcase already. He has a feeling they would probably lose or destroy the fake case somehow fairly quickly too, and they’re not exactly made of money, even with Newt’s parents’ begrudging tolerance of Jacob’s existence in Newt’s life.

Oh well. He’s never had a problem with being odd.

When they finally step out of the port and onto the cobbled stones of the city proper, Jacob takes a deep breath. Ah yes, just as polluted and muddy smelling as it’s always been. It’s almost as busy out here as it was in the port, just as loud, probably louder, and it’s jammed with people and those automobile monstrosities that have become all the rage since 1920. Fucking Ford. It’s almost exactly like how he remembers it, machine demons aside. Warmth spreads through his chest, molasses slow and thick, something fond and amused, he thinks and opens himself to it.

“What?” Jacob cocks his head to look up at Newt’s familiar crooked smile, at the way his skin pulls a little at the starburst scar along his jaw. His fingers itch to trace it.

But all Newt does is shrug, the skin by his eyes crinkled, and oh man, it still gets to him, how beautiful Newt is, even after seven years—you’d think he’d be desensitized to it by now or something—before starting to make his way across the street. Jacob hurries to keep up. “We have some time before our train arrives. Care to explore?”

Jacob grins. “Of course.”

They walk along the streets, their shoulders brushing, the case thumping companionably between their legs. Winter is in full swing here, the wind a chilly caress to flushed cheeks, the threat of snow in the stinging scent of ice and the heavy swell of the clouds overhead.

The last time they were here, Jacob thinks, it had been at the tail end of fall and they hadn’t made it even this far into the city before the equivalent of a magical police (“Aurors,” Newt tells him afterwards, his fingers a hot, possessive brand around Jacob’s aching wrist) had descended upon them and taken Jacob into custody. With so many people returning from the war at the time, both muggle and magical alike, everyone was under intense scrutiny.

War is bloody and violent and people see things they shouldn’t all the time. Missing limbs. Raw, gaping wounds. Blood and dirt and the dead everywhere from bullets, from shells, from mustard gas, from gangrene and a whole host of other diseases only war and one’s worst nightmares could inspire.

But magic.

No muggle should ever see that and remember to tell the tale. Because between the horrors of war and the wonders of magic, clearly it’s magic that they shouldn’t see, shouldn’t remember. Obviously.

(It’s not that he doesn’t understand the want for secrecy, but Jacob thinks it’s a little fucked up that people are coming home with what they’re calling “shellshock,” coming home shaking and broken and in pain, and it’s magic they’re more concerned with _Obliviating_ ).

With all the witches and wizards invested in the war, of course there would be slip ups. Of course people would _see_. And if enough people see something, if enough people believe, then, as the Auror had explained as he prepped Jacob for his Obliviation, the magical world would no longer be safe.

“It would be the Salem Witch Trials all over again, potentially on a grander, worldwide scale considering how quickly news spreads these days in comparison,” the man said, looking firm and condescending behind the desk Jacob had been chained to. It had reminded him of those interrogation rooms the police station in Lower Manhattan had, the ones he’d seen when the boy’s school had taken a field trip there. The Auror had at least been kind enough to answer all of Jacob’s questions, though not without some level of disdain.

“There’s a reason why we do these things.” He drew his wand from some inner pocket of his suit jacket. Jacob tensed, but he kept his gaze level, his face relaxed.

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt you. It’s like falling asleep.” He pointed his wand in Jacob’s face like he’s going to shove the thing straight up his nose and right into his brain—maybe he was, maybe that’s how _Obliviate_ works, it’s not like Jacob would know otherwise—and Jacob closed his eyes, clinging to his memories of the last three months: to the French forest and Newt and everything they wanted him to take from him, the only points of light in the dark void of the war.

But then there was a knock on the door, another Auror calling it all off, and suddenly Newt was there, inhumanly calm as he unlocked the manacles, his shaking hands the only unsteady thing about him. Newt’s eyes had been lit up with a burning fury that startled Jacob as much as it reminded him that yes, Newt loved him, would never let anyone hurt him if he had any say about it. And they left, grabbed the things Jacob thought he needed from his piece of shit apartment, left the rest for whoever rented the place next, and took the first illegal portkey the hell out of the U.S. that they could get their hands on.

(Mexico had been a lovely change in scenery in comparison.)

Jacob doesn’t know how Newt got the MACUSA to agree to let him go with his memories intact, not even a slap on the wrist. The only time he ever asked, the freckled man had merely mumbled about old families, old favors, and social influence. From what he remembers of Newt’s house as they’d snuck out to start their adventure, he knows his ridiculous partner comes from a pretty old and wealthy family, if the moving ( _moving!_ ) family portraits and old, vast halls and grounds were any indication. He’d left it alone after that though. Wizarding politics are confusing as hell, more so than its non-magical counterpart, and all that matters is they made it out alive and without any memories missing, right?

Right.

“Something is stalking our city,” someone says, cutting through his thoughts. He looks up. Just ahead, there is a small crowd gathered at the bottom of the stairs leading up to one of the city’s more luxurious banks (gilded and massive with Corinthian columns, the whole deal. Is it a bank or a palace? Who knows?). A small woman stands above the group, flanked by a tall boy and two young girls, the banner behind her declaring them part of some organization called the Second Salemers. He squints, his chest tightening a little bit when he realizes it’s a wand the hand on the banner is snapping in half.

Well, that’s definitely not good.

“Maybe we should keep moving—oh,” he trails off, staring blankly as Newt starts easing himself into the crowd. He sighs and shakes his head, but follows nonetheless.

“It’s reaping destruction, and then disappearing without a trace.” The woman pauses for a second, dramatic, like what she’s about to say is the answer to everything.

Voice pitched low and looming, she says, “Witches live among us.”

Jacob covertly glances at Newt. Neither his face nor the bond shows anything besides a sense of vague interest. He jostles him a bit with his shoulder, and when he looks at him, he raises his eyebrows and nods slightly in her direction, projecting what he hopes comes off as _what is her problem? Is she serious right now?_

The bond is almost two years old, and Jacob’s still learning how to use it, probably always will to some degree. Emotion is complex, and the more complicated or tangled the emotion they’re trying to convey, the harder it is to accurately project it if they mean to do so intentionally.

(Unintentionally, he knows they both project a great deal, shifts of emotion and changes of intention like the tides, fading in and out or thrashing about. It’s a good thing they learned early on how to open and close the bond as they saw fit. Perfecting that sort of control had taken months, but they’d probably have gone insane otherwise. It was time well spent, Jacob thinks, even if it left them mostly confined to the suitcase the entire time. It was like a sometimes awkward, sometimes excruciatingly painful, sometimes gloriously fantastic honeymoon. Perfect for them.

Not even Jacob wants Newt in his… whatever all the time, and constantly being beaten over the head with emotion wouldn’t exactly be ideal either.)

He must have gotten it right because Newt’s mouth quirks, slow and charmed, his head tilting down as he leans further into him—

“You there! The gentleman in the blue coat.”

They both jerk back and whip their heads towards the woman, her gaze narrowed and expectant on Newt.

“Um, yes?”

“Are you a seeker, a seeker of truth?”

A beat, then: “I find I’m more of a chaser actually.”

Jacob can’t contain a small, undignified snort at this, Newt’s amusement a buzzing tingle around his ribs, visible only in the way he seems to be biting the inside of his cheek, his eyes wide and guileless.

The woman’s mouth twists, but he doesn’t hear what she says.

Just beyond her, sitting at the top of the stairs, digging his grubby paws in the hat of some poor beggar, is the Niffler.

“Oh no,” Jacob mutters.

He eases back out through the group of people with a few apologies, ignoring the indignant sniping of the ones he bumps into in the process. His hand is secured over Newt’s on the handle of the case, dragging him along behind him. The younger man projects something crisp, surprise maybe or incredulity (they feel so similar sometimes, Jacob has a hard time differentiating them), and when did he even grab him? Instinct maybe? Regardless, they should have known this would happen. The little bastard had tried to escape three times on the ship journey from Equatorial Guinea alone, harassing the poor travelers on the Fort Elizabeth one stolen watch and necklace at a time. Luckily, thanks to Newt's magic and Jacob's iron hold, the muggle passengers and their jewels made it through without anything too amiss.

“‘scuse me, doll. Just need to get through here,” he says as he brushes past a tall woman, but she pointedly ignores him in favor of her hot dog and the Second Salemers woman.

Newt must see the Niffler now too (and it’s definitely incredulity this time, tart and just a little biting, that and exasperation, the emotions sharpening into focus and deepening in his own chest before Newt puts a lid on it until all he feels is his own agitation and the odd tugging sensation neither of them can entirely get rid of), because the second they’re fully free of the crowd, he’s yanking Jacob up the steps and towards the bank’s entrance before he even realizes the Niffler had disappeared inside.

“Sorry,” Jacob says when he accidently thumps shoulders with the teenager with the dark hair. He doesn’t catch the boy’s response, if there is any at all, his attention aimed more on not tripping and face planting onto the stairs.

The bank is even more luxurious on the inside than even the outside could suggest, everything gold looking (for surely not everything in this place is _actually_ gold plated) and shiny. The people in here, Jacob can already tell without looking that hard, tend towards the wealthy side of the spectrum. The men with their expensive looking suits and matching watches and cuff links, the women with their fashionable, or what Jacob thinks might be fashionable—how could he know? He’s been traveling all over the world for almost a decade, and everywhere they’ve been, the style considered in fashion has differed from one country to the next— dresses, their jewelry and hair pins and hats glinting brightly under the gaudy chandeliers hanging from the domed ceiling.

The perfect playground for the Niffler and his greedy paws.

The bankers must know they’re not one of their usual rich guests, let alone people who may have any actual business being in here, smelling their lack of wealth like a pixie can smell mischievous opportunity. The men glare down their noses at them from behind their shiny, wooden desks as they pass by, unable to say anything unless they do something inappropriate like loiter or punch someone or something. But whatever. He keeps an eye out for Niffler and clasps his hands behind his back, the both of them slowing down to a stroll to appear more, well, not normal exactly, but more like they came in here for some actual business related to money or loans and not catching a particularly devious magical beast.

They end up sitting on one of the low, carved benches with a good vantage point of the bank because making circuits around the place can seem highly suspicious, and it wouldn’t do for them to be thrown out or accused of trying to steal something. Jacob tries to look impatient and nervous, not that hard considering the situation they’re currently in, like he has an appointment here and is simply waiting, like maybe they do, in fact, have a good, appropriate reason for being here, yes they do, thank you very much. Nothing to see here. Except, of course, Newt has never been very good at the acting portion of their disguises. He can certainly dress the part, and he does have some instincts towards being sneaky, but he’ll never be Charlie Chaplin. All he’s projecting is a strangely intense, distracted person, his eyes flitting from person to person to floor to desk, etc.

“Why does this always happen to us?” Jacob asks and makes a show of checking his wrist watch before glancing about for Niffler again. And still not seeing him. Ugh. He’s not that much better at the acting thing, honestly. Who is he trying to kid? “Is it that we don’t treat him right? Are we not giving him enough shiny things?”

“He’ll always want more shiny things, Jacob, you know this,” Newt says, fingers tapping along the seam of the case. One of the clasps flips open, and without missing a beat, Newt closes it again.

“He’s like one of those rebellious teenagers,” he says half-heartedly. He eyes the case warily. Wouldn’t it be just their luck, if more of their cunning little creatures got out?

Newt hums, his brow crinkling, then: “There he is!” and he’s dashing away, suitcase thumping against his thigh.

Jacob’s about to follow, but he happens to glance back down at the bench, and oh…

Oh shit.

“Oh shit,” he says, gently picking up the Occamy egg into his cupped hands. The egg that was supposed to be in Newt’s charmed pocket to keep warm and incubated, the egg that was due to hatch any day now, any hour, any minute because the rest of its clutch have long since been born, and already he can hear the popping crackle of the silver shell giving way. Looks like it’s hatching now.

This is great, just great.

“Uh—Newt!" he calls after him, but the magizoologist must be lost in the thrill of the chase because he shows no indication he’s heard him as he careens around a corner and vanishes. People stare after him, varying looks of outright disgust and disapproval on their faces.

“Ah. Seriously?” Jacob shakes his head, prods at the bond, but when even that doesn’t get more of a response besides a burst of excitement, he rolls his eyes and hurries after him, keeping the egg close to his chest, under the cover of his hands. Who knows what people would think if they saw him running about with a silver egg. He can feel the way they stare after him, but it is what it is. It’s not like jogging through the bank is a federal offence or something.

At least, he doesn’t think so.

He rounds the corner, goes down a set of stairs, following the faint noise of jingling, runs down the hall, cuts around another corner, but it is here he has to stop.

See, the thing is, he’s seen a lot of bizarre, amazing things in the years he’s been traveling the world with Newt. Beautiful things. Terrifying things. Things that have left him breathless, that have left him in tears. That have scared him shitless and given him nightmares. But this, this is just… ridiculous.

Ahead, in an open bank vault— _a goddamn bank vault, fuck_ —is the love of his life, shaking Niffler about by the feet, gold bars and watches and necklaces and gems slipping out of its pouch. How the hell it can fit all of that into its tiny little pouch is a mystery to him, even more than the magic of the case he lives his life out of.

He stares.

So much for not doing anything illegal.

“Newt—”

There’s a man beside him, materializing out of thin air as if by magic, short and snooty and glaring at the both of them from behind his obnoxious, horn-rimmed glasses. “I knew it! Thieves! Mongrels!” he says.

They freeze.

As the man makes to set off the security alarm or to holler for the police or worse, Jacob makes eye contact with Newt and watches him nod and draw his wand as if in slow motion. “ _Petrificus Totalus_.”

A spark of gray light and the man lands with a heavy thump. If his screaming hadn’t caught the attention of someone nearby though, then his landing certainly would have. Jacob winces, steps around the man’s prone body, without sparing more than a quick look at him. Already, he can hear multiple sets of footsteps heading their way.

Oh man.

What is his life?

“Newt! The egg is hatching,” he says, because priorities, jogging down the expansive hall towards the vault. Newt stuffs Niffler quickly into the case, snaps the latches closed, and grins. It’s gleeful and cheek splitting. It’s the smile that comes out when he’s about to do something he probably shouldn’t, the one that he can’t contain no matter how hard he tries, the one that has gotten Jacob into a lot of uncomfortable situations in the past.

It’s an expression that simultaneously inspires affection and anxiety in Jacob.

“Don’t you dare!” But, of course, Newt doesn’t listen, just flicks his wand, and then suddenly Jacob is sailing through the rest of the hall and right into Newt as he transports them somewhere else.

He _hates_ apparition.

So much.

Jesus Christ.

It feels like he’s literally being turned inside out and falling from a great height simultaneously. Who knows, maybe they sort of are. Jacob may not have a fear of heights, but his stomach swooping like he’s actually falling always leaves him feeling a bit ill.

“Oh God,” he groans once they’ve hit solid ground, clinging onto Newt with the hand not still cradling the egg close, his face pushed into the comforting hollow of his neck. “Just—just gimme a second.”

And Newt, the ridiculous, unaffected bastard, laughs and wraps an arm around him, rubbing him on the back with one hand as if he’s one of his creatures. Warmth, delicate and soft, starts seeping into his bones. He breathes in deeply, takes in the comforting smell of earth and sweat and home. Despite himself, he’s reassured. He must be in one piece or Newt would be fretting like he did that one time Jacob lost the tip of one of his toes during an apparition. The toe part had been recovered, or healed rather, regrown more specifically, and that’s an experience Jacob never wants to relive again. Not that _that_ has stopped Newt from apparating them or whatever, whenever he deems it necessary.

“Alright, alright. I’m good.” He runs a hand over his face. Somewhere close by, people are shouting about a break in. They must still be near the bank.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, yeah. All good.”

Newt doesn’t look fully convinced, can probably still feel the phantom weight of Jacob’s discomfort, but he lets Jacob have his lie and a little space, pulling back physically and in the bond. Jacob appreciates it. “Okay.”

“Excuse me!” And then there’s a woman inserts herself between the two of them, mustard on her upper lip, and hey, it’s that hot dog lady! The one from before—and Jacob desperately moves back to keep her from jostling the Occamy egg from his grasp. She’s whispering rather harshly to Newt, something about magic and his case and no-majs or something, and then she’s dragging him away before Jacob can think of doing anything.

Well, he could have punched her, he guesses, but he wasn’t about to do that. The only lady he’s ever decked was the head of an illegal fur trading cartel in Scotland and she’d been planning on skinning Newt alive for his impudence, but more likely for his attempt at stopping her plans, so. Yeah. Totally called for there. Here, not so much.

Well, not yet.

“Um?” He blinks a few times, watching as they disappear somewhere down the street, the bond pulling and lengthening with the distance. At least, he can tell they’re still nearby in some weird part of his being, his soul maybe, who knows. Through the sort of fog that rolls in as they get further apart, he can tell Newt doesn’t seem to be in any trouble, probably.

Panic, he’s found, is one of the few emotions that will always get through the bond, no matter the distance, no matter if they closed both sides of it.

A tiny clinking noise draws his attention away, and a glance down reveals their suitcase, propped against the brick wall, one of the clasps open. He stares at it for a second before pointedly closing the clasp. He gives the creaking egg in his hand a resigned look. A hairline fissure cracks the egg’s surface, a faint, tiny _chirp_ slipping through.

He sighs.

Oh well.

 

****

 

The thing about agreeing to a magical binding is that, despite the massive amount of research the both of you do, there’s no way to fully prepare yourself for all the good that could come from it. Or the bad.

Jacob winces, rubbing at the sharp tugging in his sternum, a rubber band pulled taut, the bond quickly lengthening to accommodate the teleportation that no doubt just happened. It gradually fades back into a somewhat fainter pull, though it feels a little sore and vaguely uncomfortable when he prods at it… somehow. He feels what might have been a nudge back, but he can’t be sure. The further away they are from each other, the harder it is to tell these things.

He pauses at an intersection, waiting for the traffic to open up enough to cross the street. The Occamy baby has been taken care of and safely returned to her nest of brothers and sisters, as per Newt’s guidelines, set out when they first took the clutch into their care. They’ll have to figure out a name for her. Jacob’s always been partial to “Alexandra” or “Nancy.” The Niffler has received a stern talking to (usually, that’s Newt’s job, being the firm, maternal figure he is, but Jacob is willing to step up when he needs to). And if Newt is going to be off doing magic related things, and as long as he’s not in any trouble, then Jacob might as well take the opportunity to wander around his old home.

What things have changed? What have stayed the same? Is his old apartment even still there?

He should visit the small plot where his parents and _babcia_ have been buried. He’s got a lot to tell them, and he wants to make sure the grave keeper has been keeping it cleaned up like he should.

Considering it’s been almost a decade since he’s had the chance to take in the sights, things haven’t changed as much as he expected.

Over there is the tree he fell out of when he was five and broke his arm. He still has the scar along his forearm where the bone split through skin. Here’s the tenement complex they lived in until his mother passed away when he was just a boy, the one with the leaky pipes and the Spanish family who shared the rooms with them. Down this street is the old bakery his _babcia_ would take him to on his birthday.

(It was the only time his _babcia_ would buy a baked good instead of making it herself. Madame Romano— small and Italian and spitfire— owned and operated the bakery with her husband. She gave his _babcia_ a run for her money when it came to being an overbearing maternal figure, and she always snuck Jacob a muffin or cannoli whenever he came by. They were baking buddies, his _babcia_ and Madame Romano, who traded recipes like it was a scientific experience, all experiments and tweaks and notes and criticism back and forth. A lot of good pastries had come out of that friendship, of which he was happy to benefit from.

The bad results weren’t to be spoken of.

He’d been particularly fond of the apple strudel the bakery had, and ironically, strudel was literally the only thing his _babcia_ was bad at making.

“Everyone has to have something they’re not good at,” she would say. “And mine is strudel.”

“What’s mine?” He asked, newly ten years old and curious.

“Oh, my _słoneczko_ _.”_ Her smile turned sad, and she patted him on the head. “You’re not very good at knowing when to leave things alone. Worry away at them like a tongue to loose teeth and bloody gums, you do.”

He hadn’t understood what she meant then, scrunching his face up because how was he a tongue to teeth and bloody gums? His _babcia_ said the weirdest things sometimes.

It’s only years later that he realized— his _babcia_ long dead in the ground, sitting scared and miserable in a shell hole with some attractive, British idiot who wasn’t even suited up properly for the war happening around them—that she’d been scared for him, even then, when he was so young. Scared to lose him maybe, because he’s that person who stands up for others in the face of larger opponents, for those who can’t for themselves. He’s the one to volunteer to help in the war effort because if he’s there, maybe one more life will be saved than if he wasn’t? It wasn’t that he couldn’t leave things alone in the way people can be when they’re perpetually nosy; it was more like, if there’s even a small chance that he could help, why shouldn’t he?

“How could I leave something like that alone?” Jacob asked Newt one night in Moscow, three years into their traveling escapades. The bitter cold of winter seeped through the hatch and into the case that night, despite all of Newt’s warming charms and all the layers they put on. The creatures, at least, had the artificial sun in the biomes for any needed warmth. They, at least, had a comfortable bed and each other.

“I don’t know,” Newt said, stretching out, the knobs of his elbows and shoulders cracking (and Jacob winced whenever he did that, every time, god, his joints  _ached_ , psychosomatically, sympathetically, because how does that not hurt?) before cuddling in close again for the warmth. “I wouldn’t be able to leave it alone either. I certainly didn’t.”

And Jacob had huffed a laugh, pressing a soft kiss to Newt’s brow. “Quite a pair we make.”

Newt hummed, eyes closing. “Happily.”)

Had she lived long enough to see more than the stirrings of the war, maybe she would have lost him, in a way. He hasn’t exactly been able to come back to New York until recently, after all.

Instead, in the end, he’d lost her.

Suddenly, he wants nothing more than to bring Newt here, just once, a distinct longing clamoring in his chest, his heart clenching as he looks at the glazed pastries in the window and remembers. It would be nice, to have the present connecting to his past, even for just a moment, and he thinks Newt would probably like it, would enjoy the food and appreciate the gesture for what it is. It could be a nice surprise before they leave New York in the evening. Madame Romano had passed before his _babcia_ _,_ so he wouldn’t be able to introduce them, but still.

It may be the only chance he gets.

There are some things that _have_ changed though.

The empty lot he used to build mud castles in is gone, replaced by a fancy looking housing complex. The bellhop gives him a smile and a wave when he pauses to gape at the scale of the building. The presumed tenants side eye him as they leave like he might try to steal their jewels, muttering about mongrels and strange disturbances in the subway. It’s one of the tallest buildings he’s ever seen though, just give him a second, damn it.

The apartment his father had a heart attack in has also disappeared, replaced with a squat grocery store. The walls had been thin and the whole place perpetually dirty, no matter how often his _babica_ had cleaned. But it had been better than the cramped space they’d had before, and it was better than the overcrowded places the harbor waters would flood on stormy days. He’d only been six, then. To this day, he could have sworn that place was haunted. Probably a good thing it’s gone, especially now that he knows ghosts are real and all.

He even stops by his old apartment complex, the one he lived in before the war, before Newt and magical creatures and adventures around the globe, visiting places he never thought he'd get to see in his life time. Or rather, he finds the rubble of it, construction workers with their rolled up sleeves and caps clearing away the debris while others cart in supplies for the new construction. He can’t make heads or tails of the concrete, steel beams, and bricks. Could be anything.

In a fit of what can only be the perfect combination of curiosity and insanity, Jacob sidles up next to one of the workers standing off to the side, smoking. The man glares at him, his moustache twitching.

“Can I help you?” he asks, blowing out a stream of smoke, his accent thick and harsh. Jacob’s almost surprised he can understand it, and he can’t help but blink at the man for a second. It’s a little jarring. Even though he’s here and has been idly listening to people as he passed them by, none of them had really spoken _to_ him. It was more like a dream, wasn’t as immediate, as in his face as this man’s accent is now. The closest he got was the customs official when they first got here, but even then, he could tell that while the man was American, he wasn’t from the city. His own accent has diluted somewhat after years of immersion in other people’s languages, including but not limited to his very British partner.

Huh.

“Maybe.” Jacob clears his throat awkwardly. He’s already here, might as well see it through. “See, I used to live in that old building, and I was wondering what they’re putting here now?”

“A warehouse.”

“A warehouse?”

“Yes.”

“And they decided to tear down an apartment complex just to put in a warehouse?”

“No.”

“No?”

The man stares at him. Jacob only feels a little bad for bothering him. “There was a gas explosion two weeks ago,” he says, gruff and slow, grinding his cigarette under the heel of his boot. Jacob tries not to take offense, keeps his face polite. He’s not an idiot, he just wants to know what’s going on, dear God. He forgot how rude people in this city can be (not that he hasn’t run into his fair share of rude people in other places, but New York City people can be a particularly special, obnoxious brand). “We leveled what was left, so we can put in a warehouse.”

“Alright… Thanks.” Jacob gives him a bland smile, which the man ignores, already strutting away like some kind of arrogant prick. Well, fuck you too. Ugh, whatever. He takes a deep breath, exhales slowly, letting go of his annoyance as he does so. He definitely hasn’t missed this, he thinks and starts walking again.

He spends a good hour like this, wandering around the familiar and unfamiliar streets, going deeper and deeper into the city he once called home.

The whole affair has been a largely quiet, introspective one, too quiet, he should know better than to let his guard down considering the life he lives these days. He probably should be paying better attention to his surroundings too, he thinks as he runs blindly into a young man, but there’s nothing really to be done with it now. The two of them rebound off each other, the suitcase flinging from his hand and into the depths of the alleyway to their left.

It’s with increasing horror that he watches the suitcase tumble along the ground a few feet before thumping flat on one side. It’s a good thing space exists separately in the case, or else that could have spelt certain death for everything in there.

Jesus Christ.

There’s silence, then:

“I—I’m sorry—”

“Shhh!” He throws a hand up, not taking his eyes off the case. There’s a sharp intake of breath, but he ignores it. He stands up carefully, his ass sore and his palms all scraped up, but he doesn’t think anything is broken or badly bleeding. The case doesn’t move as he walks slowly towards it. There’s another nudge across the bond, unmistakable. He’s nearly there, surely everything is okay, but right as he gets within a foot of it, the clasps flip open ominously.

“Hit the deck!” He shouts, turning and diving behind the wall of one of the buildings. He grabs the boy as he goes, throwing his arm over the kid’s head and ducking them down just in time.

_BOOM!_

Rubble and debris spray out over their heads as several beasts burst out of the case, screeches and roars and the thundering of hooved feet echoing around them. He can’t see anything through the dust in the air, no hide or tail to be seen. He’ll have to go inside at some point to do an actual head count if he even _wants_ to know who’s escaped for sure, but first he checks on the boy—the _muggle_ boy. Fuck.

“Are you okay?” Jacob asks him through the ringing of his ears.

He doesn’t seem to be any worse for wear, powdered white from his dark hair to his dark suit and staring at Jacob. There’s something niggling at him, a sense of familiarity, like he’s met the boy before. But from where?

Jacob spares a glance for the buildings, which are now short almost a full wall each, and another for the street where people are already beginning to gather in varying degrees of horror. In a split second decision, he pulls the boy further into the alleyway by the arm, the dust and shadows therein still churned up enough to give them some cover. Hopefully.

“W-what—Ah!” The boy shouts in surprise as a murtlap springs at him from the dust and shadows, screeching, its rodent teeth bared.

“Nope! Not today, Elizabeth,” Jacob says, grabbing the murtlap right out of the air by her foot before she can reach her mark, practiced, at least, in this. “You’re being very bad right now, young lady. You’ve disappointed me greatly. Be sure that Newt will give you a good talking to once he’s found out what you’ve just tried to do.” He carries her squirming, agitated body over to where the case has flopped back from the force of escaping creatures towards the intersection where this alley intersects another one, tosses her in with the confidence that she will land safely on their bed in the workshop’s corner (he’s had years to perfect his aim), and closes and locks the case firmly.

“Oh, man,” he mutters and turns back to the boy. His face is stricken, his eyes impossibly wide. And that’s when he places him. He’s that boy, the one with the crazy lady at the bank steps. Those Second Salemers. “Shit.”

“I—what was that? What just happened?”

Jacob grabs at something, anything, to say. “Um, well, see here, kid. There was a—a gas leak, yeah. Some faulty electrical wiring. And the buildings exploded,” and the boy is shaking his head in disbelief, but he trucks on nonetheless because he has too, because this boy is probably the worst person to have seen this considering the group he’s been hanging out with, “and we should really get you to a doctor. I’m afraid you were injured in the explosion, hit your head—”

“No,” the boys says. Red splotches deepen high on his cheeks, visible even through the ash on his face. “I know that’s not what happened. I know what I saw!”

“And what was that?” Jacob asks sharply, because maybe he didn’t get a clear view at all, maybe Jacob can still save this.

“I saw those _things_ , those monsters. They’re not normal, they can’t be! Don’t lie to me. They have to be—” he pauses, his eyebrows furrowing as he breathes, “magical.”

His stomach drops. “Well, fuck.”

“No! No—I—” A commotion is starting towards the mouth of the alleyway, a siren shrieking through the air, incessant and quickly approaching, and the boy flinches bodily. The dust is beginning to settle, they could be seen any minute, and the shadows won’t be enough to disguise their existence here. He could just take the case and leave. Who would believe this one boy? But then he thinks of the woman, how vapid she’d been about magic wreaking havoc on the city, of the banner she had with her, the hand breaking a wand in half. Maybe he could knock him out? He’d hate to do it, but if something has to be done—

“I—I’m a wizard, too,” the boy says, trembling and hunched in on himself. Jacob blinks at him. He takes in the shuddering, anxious lines of his body, and for a second, he’s reminded of Newt, pale and shaky in the face of war and blood and devastation, in the face of Jacob’s possible rejection, and decides to take a chance.

Maybe the kid is telling the truth.

Maybe he’s not. Maybe this is all just some act to play on Jacob’s sympathy.

Either way, it looks like he’s stuck with him for now. He’ll just have to keep his guard up, not reveal too much until he’s sure of the authenticity and sincerity of this supposed teenage wizard. Worst comes to worst, Newt can help _Obliviate_ him, should his words prove false. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always the MACUSA. He’d hate to turn anyone over to them. He’d do it for Newt though, to protect him, to protect their creatures.

For them, he’d do anything.

“What’s your name?” Jacob asks.

“I—what?”

“Your name? I’m Kowalski, Jacob Kowalski.”

“Oh, um. Credence. Credence Barebone.”

“Okay, Credence. I believe you,” Jacob says. Credence twitches, his shoulders inching up to his ears. The noise is getting louder. More people must be crowding in to see, to demand an explanation. There are shouts and cries, and they really need to get out of here. Now. He holds out his hand urgently. “Better come along with me then. I could use your help. We’ve got some creatures to find.”

Credence bites his lip, but he puts his shaking hand in Jacob’s.

 

****

 

Jacob doesn’t want to risk letting Credence in to the case, not without further observation, and certainly not without explaining the situation to Newt. So he goes off instinct and prior knowledge as far as who might be missing. Possibly Niffler because if he’s not trying to get out, then he must be dead because even when he’s ill, he’s getting out. Probably Lila. She’s always itching to get out, especially since she’s in season, or whatever Newt calls it. She’s been craving a change of scenery, if Newt is to be believed, which Jacob does, avidly and with all his heart. Jacob still has a hard time telling with her though. He just knows she likes him, if the head nuzzles and lack of blowing him up are anything to go by.

Probably. Hopefully.

Dougal may have escaped too, he had been quite antsy on the trip over, but he’s going to wait on Newt for that one. It’s hard enough finding a beast in the expansive scape of New York City, let alone one that is invisible.

Maybe some others? Agh. This is why he leaves this to Newt. Jacob can name all the names, more or less all the species, and even have a hunch at where they might be based on the biomes he’s seen them happily frolic in. But ask him to do it in New York City, and he feels a little blind.

God, Newt. He hopes he’s not too worried.

The pulling feeling that started up when the case ripped open has only gotten worse as Jacob’s led the way away from the wreckage, towards where he thinks one of the creatures might be. He tries to send reassurance down the line, but he must be too far away for it to translate properly. What a mess. Hopefully, Newt will come and find them soon.

“Where are we going?” Credence asks timidly.

“I’m pretty sure one of the little bastards went this way,” he says. He already feels tired and they’ve only just started. Call him crazy, but there were some tiny footprints in the debris leading this way, and though they disappeared at some point, he’d know them anywhere. Now, all they have to do is find the closest garden or window box.

“Window box?”

“Yes.”

“…Okay.”

They trudge along in silence. The first couple window boxes give no results, and the only garden they stumble upon looks dead and old, not a likely place for this particular beast. The occasional car rolls by. The occasional person walks by. It’s weirdly empty, this side of the road. It’s only the late afternoon, but it feels like it’s starting to get dark, the clouds thickening ominously above them. Maybe it will rain. Or snow. It’s the season, after all. Their shoes make audible scrapping noises on the cobblestones. It’s all strange.

The magical kind of strange more than likely. His kind of strange.

They pass an intersection where the perpendicular road has a gaping tear in the cobblestones, a gruesome wound in the pavement leading to the rubble and ruins of some building.

Very strange indeed.

“There,” Credence says around the time most people have banded inside to eat dinner, pointing to another window box, this one sitting on the third story of a tenement building. Dirt rains down from it onto the sidewalk in weird intervals, but no one is visibly around to be the culprit.

Bingo.

“Good eye there, Credence,” Jacob says and stares up at the box in disbelief. How in the hell did it even get up there? It’s not like it can fly. A question for another time, maybe.

“Hmm. Now, how to get up there.” Jacob eyes the window box.

They could always try going in the building, but then they would have to break into the person’s home, and that’s just not on. He’d prefer to avoid doing illegal things when possible, despite Newt’s own inclination to throw muggle law by the wayside without too much care. He throws magical law aside too, so Jacob takes no offense. But even though Jacob is pretty firmly in the world of magic, he’s still got most of one foot in the world of the non-magical, so he tries to stick to it when he can. This motivation of his has helped them avoid unwanted trouble on more than one odd occasion.

He looks at Credence. “Can you apparate?”

“Um. What?”

“Apparate? Teleport?” Jacob says. The boy flushes. “You know,” and he gestures in what he hopes brings apparition to mind. Yes, he can be very articulate. Thank you.

“No? I—I haven’t really learned that…”

“Okay.” Jacob shrugs and looks back up at the box. He rubs a hand over his moustache in thought, turning his head this way and that, walking back and forth in front of the building. Maybe another perspective would help.

“Well, I guess that means—we have to take the fire escape,” he says, snapping his fingers and nodding. The window box is attached to a corner apartment, the fire escape winding up the perpendicular side of the building. With a little leaning and a lot of luck, one of them should be able to get inside the planter box and get the little bastard out. And by one of them, he means himself.

Good thing he’s not afraid of heights.

“Alright, so, here’s the plan,” he says, turning back to Credence.

“Are you sure about this, Mr. Kowalski?” Credence calls bleakly from below him minutes later.

“Yeah, yeah, of course! Just be sure to grab him up before he gets away!” Jacob says, case in one hand (because there’s no way in hell he would leave it down there with Credence, known associate to the crazy, magic hater. Also, he would loath to leave it down there and have it spew out more of God knows what. There’s been enough trouble for today, thank you very much), the other clenching onto the metal railings as he climbs up the stairs. Every single step groans under his weight, making creaky, angry sounds whenever he moves up a step. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe they should just break into the person’s home.

No. No, he’s already made it this far. He’s got this.

Probably.

Eh.

He makes it to the right level without falling or dying, so he’s off to a good start. A glance in the window reveals darkness. No one home then. Even better. A look at the window box reveals what he already knew to be true. Inside, his butt sticking out of the dirt and up in the air like a flesh colored daisy, is a gnome.

Judging by the weird patchy coloration on its left butt cheek, he’d have a guess that this one’s Henry. Fucking Henry. Henry hates him. He hates Henry. It’s perfectly mutual, much to Newt’s amusement. Bastard.

“Okay! Get ready!” He sets the case down. He’s going to need both hands for this. Credence takes a couple fumbling steps back, his arms outstretched like he might try and catch him. Well, if he wants to try, Jacob won’t stop him.

Carefully, he reaches around the corner of the building, keeping one hand on the railing so he doesn’t fall. He thrusts his hand into the planter box as quickly as possible, grabbing at what he hopes is an arm or a leg and not a plant or something worse, and pulls. The second the beast’s head comes free of the dirt, he’s screaming and trying to bite at his hand. Yep, this is Henry all right.

The fucker gets a snap at his wrist, and startled, Jacob drops him. He watches the gnome flail about the three stories down before bouncing off the pavement with a thump, lying limp where he lands. Credence’s face is a hilarious mask of horror.

“Don’t worry, Credence! He’s just stunned!” Jacob says and makes his way back down the stairs, suitcase in hand. His wrist throbs. Damn gnome. Hopefully, luck is on their side and no one noticed what just happened. He doesn’t see anyone when he looks, the road barren and empty. Weird, weird, weird.

“Are you sure?” Credence sounds a bit on the choked side.

Oh man.

“Yes! Yes!” Jacob hurries to reassure. Maybe Credence hasn’t had to deal with gnomes before? Newt seemed to imply they were as common an infestation as mice are in the muggle realm, but maybe Credence, if he’s telling the truth about being a wizard, really hasn’t seen or dealt with one before. It can be a bit violent, gnome wrangling. And the city doesn’t exactly lend itself to gnome livelihood, not the way rural areas do.

By the time he makes it back down to the ground level, Credence has the stunned gnome dangling in his hands, a look of deep sadness on his pale face.

“Oh, Credence.” Jacob sighs. “I’m so sorry. Here, just watch.”

He takes Henry from Credence by one leg and gives him a good shake and a smack across the back. Credence flinches. The change is almost instantaneous though. Like nothing had even happened, the gnome is hissing and spitting and trying to bite at his wrist again.

“Come now Henry, is that any way to treat the one who feeds you?” Jacob asks conversationally as he opens the case and chucks him inside with a flourish.

Fuck you too, Henry.

“See? Nothing to worry about.”

The boy’s shoulders slump and he offers what Jacob thinks is a small, bleak smile that looks more like a grimace. “Um, so what next?”

“Hmm.” But he’s saved from having to answer, the crack of apparition almost thunderous in the empty street. He heaves a deep breath around the bond snapping shorter into place. Credence stumbles back a step, his hands clenched together, but Jacob gently pats him on the arm, taking note of the way he leans into it instinctively before jerking away. There’s something there, something sad and fractured, and it could be the guilty conscience of a liar or it could be something else. He’s very skittish too. He’ll need more information but he makes a point to give the teen a little space. “Sorry.”

“Jacob!” And there he is, in all his tall, freckled glory. Newt’s hair is standing a little on end, like he’s been running his hands through it a lot recently, his clothes ruffled and wrinkled where he inevitably, unconsciously tugs on it when he’s anxious.

“I was wondering where you went off to,” Jacob says, holding his arms out to accept the embrace he gets when Newt finally reaches him. “It’s okay. I’m fine. Just a little worn down.”

“Just a little worn down?” Newt repeats, eyes intent, and pulls away to cup his face, turning it this way and that, checking for injuries or maybe he’s just admiring Jacob’s face. Who knows, with Newt. He checks his wrist next, probably having felt the sharp sting of Jacob’s pain when it happened, tutting at the bite mark. Offhandedly, he says, “We saw what happened across town, got it all sorted.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. It’s been taken care of.”

“We?” Jacob asks, only now just seeing that, oh yes, that weird woman from before, the one with the hot dog and the mustard on her lip, is here too. She looks vaguely uncomfortable, but he’s not sure if it’s because she knows he’s a muggle or because Newt is still crowding in close to him. Maybe it’s both. “Hello.”

“Hello,” she says, strained. Her face is pained and sad, but when he actually focuses on her, she’s no longer looking at him, at either of them. It’s on Credence. Before he can parse _that_ out, her eyes narrow back on _him_. “What in the hell happened?”

“Who’s this?” Newt asks before he can say anything, gaze snagging on Credence. There’s a flicker through the bond, something quick and fleeting, recognition? But all Newt does is raise an eyebrow.

One question at a time.

“This is Credence Barebone,” he says. He gives Newt a loaded look, one that says _we need to talk as soon as possible, preferably alone_ , but also _I missed you, I’m glad you’re okay, where the hell have you been?_ Newt nods, and he feels the echo of his agreement, the brush of relief that he’s okay too. Considering the state they left that alleyway, it’s no surprise Newt assumed the worst. “He’s been helping me round up a few of our, erm, escaped beasts.”

There’s a pause, then the woman whispers, strangled, “You mean to say that case has been opened?”

So she knows about the case. Okay. “Only a little bit.”

“Oh, Deliverance Dane.”

“I mean, we’ve already caught a few of them,” Jacob says defensively. He turns back to Newt, frowning. “I’m so sorry. I tried to stop it, but—”

“It’s okay.” Newt pulls lightly on his coat sleeve. “How are the other creatures?”

And Jacob can tell he’s itching to go inside the case himself, that there’s very little stopping him now, his own chest vibrating with it. “The Occamy hatched, a girl. Beautiful and healthy, of course—”

“Of course.” The skin by Newt’s eyes crinkle, his smile crooked.

“I haven’t had a chance to actually go in though, since some of them escaped. For obvious reasons,” he says, tilting his head in Credence’s general direction, the boy watching the whole exchange with interest.

“We should check on them as soon as possible—”

“That’s it,” The woman interrupts, her voice high and thin. “You’re all coming with me!”

Newt’s brows furrow, his mouth thinning. “Miss Goldstein—”

“No.” Her expression is firm and unyielding. It softens somewhat when she glances at Credence. Jacob wonders if there’s something there. She must recognize him too, because even Jacob can tell the Second Salemers are a vocal, in your face, kind of group. Of course she will have seen them around the city, and yet, she doesn’t seem to be seething in rage or defensiveness all things considered. “You too, Credence.”

Well, alright then.

 

****

 

Meeting Queenie Goldstein is an… experience.

Yes, let’s go with that.

She's all tinkling words and bright smiles, and there’s no denying she’s beautiful and kind. She can also read _minds_ , which is frankly terrifying... Well... No, yeah, absolutely terrifying, but fascinating as hell too. Legilimency, Newt called it. They ran into a helpful wizard who had that ability during their search for a sphinx in Egypt, but he’d had to concentrate in near silence just to pull a single thought from someone’s head. His transfiguration abilities were top notch though.

Miss Goldstein must be a pretty powerful, skilled witch, considering how effortlessly she seems to be plucking thoughts from people’s heads, responding to them without hesitation.

“Oh, such a charmer,” Miss Goldstein says, her cheeks dimpling. “And please, call me Queenie, honey. Everyone does.”

Jacob flushes a little and shifts awkwardly in his seat, but he returns her smile. “Ah, not a problem.”

He’s going to need to keep track of that, control himself a little better. Newt’s shoulder bumps into his, but when he looks at him, Newt shrugs, his eyes darting around the room.

Alright then.

He lets himself enjoy watching the sisters cook and bake, their magic easing the process significantly. Table settings fly through the air. Dough rises and bakes right in front of his eyes, no oven necessary. It’s not the most fanciful magic he’s ever seen, and it’s certainly not the first time he’s seen food prepared by it, but the sisters move around each other easily, their wands waving elegantly. It’s nice, that familiarity. Credence stares, awed by the sisters’ display—surely, if he’s a wizard, a little magic like this wouldn’t be all that interesting? Newt certainly doesn’t seem to think so, if the mild, unimpressed expression on his face is anything to go by.

To be fair, with the people Credence associates with, maybe he’s just never had the chance to see it. Maybe he’s like those muggle-borns Newt has told him about, the ones who grow up without much magic at all in their lives until their Hogwarts letter arrives in the mail. If that’s the case, though, wouldn’t Credence have attended the American magical school equivalent? Would he have even been asked to attend, if he’s muggle-born? The American magical society sure has some issues with their non-magical folk, so who knows.

Hm.

“Time to eat,” Queenie says.

Jacob digs in, his stomach rumbling. They haven’t exactly had time to eat anything, between Niffler this morning and the other beasts escaping that afternoon, and he’d never noticed how hungry he was until the smell of fresh baked pastry slapped him in the face. Newt and Credence don't seem as hungry, not really, the both of them picking at the food. Newt’s mouth is twisted into a frown, his fingers tapping and fidgeting with the cutlery. He’d had to be coaxed to the table like some kind of wary beast, his grip fixed on the handle of the case. Credence, hunched over and quiet, his eyes darting around like he can’t believe what he’s seeing, taking everything in, had to be gently pushed into a chair or risk standing there staring for the evening. Between the two of them, there’s an odd tension in the room. The sisters don’t seem to notice it, or rather, they seem to be ignoring it as they talk.

“I can’t believe the nerve of that girl. She knows he’s married,” Miss Goldstein says.

“Oh, Teenie. She’s in love with him. A little something like marriage ain’t never stopped that if someone’s motivated enough, and she is,” Queenie says.

Jacob snorts in agreement. A specific Italian baker comes distinctly to his mind. Oh, what a scandal that had been, one his _babcia_ had taken immense interest in, what with it being her friend involved. The strudel had tasted particularly good that year.

Miss Goldstein shoots him a flat look.

“You can call her Tina, honey. No need to ‘Miss Goldstein’ her.” Queenie waves her wand, the platter of sugar dusted strudel floating over to his side of the table. “Would you like some strudel?”

“Uh, yes. Thank you.” And God, she’s beautiful and her magical strudel tastes really damn good. It may not be as good as Madame Romano's, but he doesn't think anyone could bake a strudel like her. It’s a pretty good attempt though. In another life, if Newt didn’t exist or if they had never met, maybe… but that’s neither here nor there.

"Thank you, sugar," she says, her teeth gleaming with the light of the candles flickering on the table spread.

Newt seems to get a little tense beside him, and up to that point, the bond has been abnormally quiet, like Newt’s been taking particular care as to what was crossing over to Jacob, flickers of interest and the sort, but now something dark and agitated whispers through the bond. Before he can analyze what it is, it abruptly cuts off entirely.

He pauses mid-chew.

When the bond closes up like this, he knows better than to throw himself uselessly against it. It can feel like a wall sometimes, an unbending, rigid barrier. They close the bond all the time: when they want privacy, when they need a break from the duality the bond inspires, to just exist singularly for a little bit, when they’re in trouble and the double amount of emotions is more hindrance than help, but that feels different to what this it. It’s only ever this bad if something is wrong and one of them is trying to hide it. Or if they’re in the middle of a fight. Nothing like feeling your partner’s anger and frustration at you in the middle of a disagreement. They don’t happen often, thankfully, the both of their demeanors lending themselves more to compromise and articulate discussion over knock out, drag out fights, but they’ve both been known to drop scathing remarks or cutting replies or extensive, brooding silences on occasion. They can both be a bit… stubborn and hard headed about some things, how they prioritize the other’s health being one of them, and they can both be a bit reckless if the other is in trouble.

All he’s saying is, they’re not immune to it.

He hates it when it gets like this.

It stings. He doesn’t know what he’s done for Newt to shut him out like this when they were fine only an hour before.

“Hey,” he whispers, trying to catch Newt’s eye.

But there's a clatter of utensils, drawing everyone’s attention to the blonde. Beside him, Newt stiffens.

"Oh my," comes the blonde’s breathless response. Her eyes are wide, her delicate eyebrows arched. His chest tightens, suddenly anxious in spite of himself.

It's not that he's ashamed of the bond, he never could be, not in a million years, and it’s not that he doesn't like people knowing about it, far from it. He doesn't mind telling people, takes pleasure in their gaping mouths and disbelief. Because apparently, a bond like this is a big deal, a _huge_ fucking deal, so much so that, just a week after the bonding, they’d received an owl from Newt’s parents cordially inviting them to return to the Scamander Manor to discuss the plans for their bonding reception (this letter was unceremoniously trashed, and Newt muttered peevishly about it for days under his breath before sending them a formally worded response declining their offer. It had taken Jacob weeks of kisses and fumbling affection through the fledgling bond to get him out of his mood). And it all only reinforced his decision to accept Newt’s proposal. If it's such a big deal, then it must be even more so that Newt even bothered to entertain the idea, let alone ask and actually go through with it.

Makes Jacob feel all the more loved for it. Even when Newt’s acting strange like he is now.

Well, stranger than usual. 

But, and here’s the thing, he prefers to reveal it on his own terms. It's private, after all, one he's willing to share and discuss it depending on the situation and whose involved and if Newt agrees with it (because Newt is the more private between the two of them and Jacob would never want to presume permission; consent goes both ways), but to have it plucked right out of his head is more than a little disconcerting and a lot more uncomfortable. When it was just him, just his thoughts about strudel and magic, then it was okay, he didn’t care, but this involves Newt, and that’s not alright.

“I’m so sorry. If I could turn it off, I would,” Queenie says, casting heartfelt glances at the both of them.

"What?" Tina asks.

And the thing is they've met more than a few magic folk who didn’t take the knowledge of the bond very well, not very well at all if the speckled burn marks on his back are anything to go by (and of course, Newt matches him in this as well, another set of scars to join the bullet wounds from the war), because he's a muggle or because it's just not done these days, who knows, maybe it's both. Either way, he likes to gauge their reactions first lest there be the potential for negative consequences.

"Oh, honey," she says quietly and reaches to pat him on the hand. "Don’t worry. For what it’s worth, I think it’s beautiful."

“Oh, um, thanks,” Jacob says. This isn’t good, the subject needs to be changed. Now. “So, about that strudel—”

“What?” Tina asks again, this time focusing the brunt of her gaze on her sister.

“Oh, nothing to worry about, Teenie,” she says. “Would you like some strudel Credence?”

“I—yes, please?”

The blonde’s attempt at diverting the attention seems to have failed as well. And between the glare Tina levels him and the odd slant Newt’s shoulders have taken, Jacob decides it’s high time to get out of there.

“Uh, so—where are we staying?” Jacob asks, grateful that his voice doesn’t waver or reflect his desperation. “I’m a bit tired.”

“Now, wait a second—”

“You can bunk in over there, of course.” Queenie points towards what appears to be the sole bedroom, shooting the brunette a look. Tina’s mouth pinches like she’s about to start an argument, but then she heaves a breath, acquiescing.

“Okay.” She stands, and Jacob does the same. Newt and Credence follow his example. “Follow me, then, gentlemen.”

“Oh, not you, sweetie. You should finish your strudel first. You’re all skin and bones,” Queenie says, pushing the pastry plate closer to Credence.

“Thank you,” Credence says hesitantly and sits back down. He really does remind him of Newt, a little bit, noting the way he leans into the hand Queenie puts on his arm before the two of them get corralled into the bedroom. Behind Tina’s back, the blonde winks at Jacob. She’s about as subtle as a brick, that one.

"I'm sorry it isn't much," Tina says into the silence. It’s small, but there’s two beds of vaguely decent size and the linen looks clean, so it’s already better than some sleeping situations he’s found himself in over the years.

"We've shared tight quarters before," Jacob says offhandedly, thinking of Mumbai and living in each other's pockets more than they ever did during the war. Going undercover can be a messy business with few perks or benefits but at least they’d had each other.

“Credence can take the couch, I suppose—”

“No,” Newt says. He unceremoniously flops back onto the bed, his coat and shoes still on, the case clutched close to his chest. Jacob shrugs and sits down on the edge of the mattress, starts unlacing his shoes.

“Don’t forget your shoes, sweetheart,” Jacob says with a pointed look at Newt’s feet.

“Don’t you ‘sweetheart’ me, Mr. Kowalski,” Newt mutters, but he kicks off his boots and turns to face the wall.

Tina blinks, and Jacob can just see the cogs whirling in her head, piecing together all the evidence she’s witnessed today, and her expression constricts. Her disapproval is clear, and Jacob prepares himself for some sort of verbal assault—it wouldn’t be the first time someone has taken offense at Jacob and Newt’s relationship for some reason or another—but she doesn’t say anything else except to tell them where the bathroom is, and then she eases the doors closed.

“So,” Jacob drags the word out, collapsing onto his side of the bed. He doesn’t bother with the blankets, not yet. “What’s her deal?”

Newt is silent for a moment, the bond unnervingly still. He never thought he’d get used to something as volatile and ever changing as a magical bond, but when it’s cut off like this, he can’t help the anxious buzzing under his skin.

He’s not used to being singular anymore, not after having Newt’s emotions filtering in to fill all the empty spaces he has near constantly for over two years, not after existing as a half to a wonderfully brilliant whole. Sure, he _could,_ losing the bond won’t kill him or anything, but that doesn’t mean he wants to. He never wants to have to get used to being alone again. Just thinking about it feels like a betrayal to himself, ridiculous as that is.

Newt does seem to inspire the ridiculous, in Jacob and otherwise.

Finally, the younger man huffs. “She’s an ex-Auror.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Petulance isn’t a good look on him, on anyone really, but to see it on him only serves to remind Jacob that even Newt, a scientific and pragmatic person to his core, is capable of it, but that’s certainly what is lining Newt’s tone now. “She witnessed some of what happened with Niffler and noticed you were a muggle.”

“What?”

“And then she arrested me on the grounds that I’m not technically a registered wand user in America. Saw me as her ticket back into the forces, I’d assume,” Newt says. “At least she didn’t notice I’d left the case with you.”

Jacob sits up. “She arrested you?” Even he can tell his voice has gone a little, well, shrill. “What do you mean you’re not registered? There weren’t any issues with _that_ the last time we were here.”

Newt shrugs.

“Newt.”

“When we came here last, I was still technically a Ministry worker and was registered as such. This time, however, I am not, and I just haven’t had the chance to register again.” Newt’s hand flails about as he gestures, knocking into the wall hard enough to make Jacob wince, but the man seems to take no notice, rather invested in his waspish tirade. “I didn’t think it would be an issue. It’s not like other countries are so arse over kettle about it. We were only supposed to be here for a few hours. So, my apologies for not being overly prepared.”

Rant over, Jacob watches him curl a little more into himself, around the battered leather case that has been their home almost as long as Jacob has known him. There’s a palpable tension coiling around Newt’s spine. It takes Jacob a few seconds, the pieces slowly coming together, but when they do, all he can do is raise his eyebrows at the hunched back of his partner.

"Are—are you sulking?" Jacob asks incredulously.

"No," he says, sullen and clipped, but Jacob can see the red seeping patchy over his ears and the back of his neck. It’s one of his tells that Jacob finds the most endearing.

“Oh, man. You are!”

“No, I’m not.”

But it’s too late. Once he’s started giggling, he can’t stop the fits that overtake him. It’s not exactly sensitive of him, and he knows this, feels a little guilty for it, but after the bizarre day he’s had, it’s the last straw. He just—only to him could this all have happened. This is his life.

(And he wouldn’t have it any other way.)

It takes a little awkward fumbling, but Newt rolls over to face him, the case slamming into his chest with such accuracy Jacob wouldn’t be surprised if Newt planned for it to happen. His face is the picture of offended annoyance, but Jacob isn’t entirely sure it’s at him. "It's not funny."

But Jacob keeps laughing, couldn’t help himself even if he tried, and Newt kicks him in the shin and the bed really is quite small. He falls off with a startled squeak and a thump. They both pause, breath held as they listen for hurried footsteps or irritated ranting, but no one comes.

Groaning, his joints aching faintly (and when did he start feeling old? He’s only thirty-four, for God’s sake), Jacob hauls himself back onto the bed and leaves what little distance can be afforded between them with such a small mattress to work with (so, almost none at all, but the intent is there, and that’s what’s important). He doesn’t want to fall off again, but a little space during a discussion like this can go a long way. It’s easier to maintain eye contact this way, for one thing.

“Alright, what's eating at you?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Really?"

"Everything is perfectly brilliant." Newt’s mouth curls in a snide mockery of his usual smile, but it’s there that Jacob finds a clue as to the younger man’s odd behavior.

"Uh huh."

“Honestly, Jacob. Just leave it be.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

“Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t say so if I wasn’t.”

“Alright,” Jacob says and turns onto his back. Closing his eyes, he starts counting his breathes. Seven years of cohabitation with a scientist, one with such an extreme and necessary focus on observation, has done wonders to Jacob’s own observational skills. He’s no Sherlock Holmes, but he knows Newt, and though the man would never admit it, he’s a creature of habit, just like everyone else, just like the creatures their lives revolve around.

It’s on the fifteenth breath that he breaks. “Oh Merlin, I just—I was just… jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“Inescapably,” comes Newt’s wry response.

“Of what?” He opens one eye to look at him without turning his head. Newt’s brows are furrowed, his lip pinched between teeth.

“Queenie.”

Startled, Jacob can’t help but look him full on. But there’s no jest to be found, no hidden joke or witty teasing, only an uncomfortable sort of honesty. “There's nothing for you to worry about, darling."

"I know that," Newt huffs. "I'm aware that this is utterly irrational—but it’s how I feel."

"Definitely irrational. I mean, sure she's beautiful and kind and makes a mean strudel—"

"Ah yes, this makes me feel so much better, Jacob, thank you—" And his expression is twisting further in on itself, that damned bland mask of disinterest sliding into place, so Jacob hurries to finish.

"But I love you, Newt. God, we are literally bound together for life—"

"Not necessarily. The bond can be dissolved—"

"But only if we choose for it too, which I’m not planning on doing anytime soon—"

"But you don't know that—"

“—not unless _you_ want to—”

“No, I don’t—” And Jacob believes him. Of course, he believes him. They’ve been together for years, through adventures and life threatening situations and disagreements, and if there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s to never doubt Newt’s love for him. He’s it for him. He wouldn’t have proposed marriage if he wasn’t sure. It’s something he knows Newt has realized too, but even so, he can’t completely disperse Newt’s every insecurity, just like Newt can’t completely wave away Jacob’s own occasional burst of it, though the bond has gone a long way to help both of them. They are the byproducts of shitty childhoods; insecurities are only a natural consequence, and they’ve been cropping up less and less as time has gone on. They’ve come so far, overcome so much.

Which is how he knows just what to say this time.

“Hey," he says softly and waits patiently until he manages to catch Newt’s gaze and hold it. "I don't give rings to just anyone, you know." He reaches up and pulls on the band, the metal tinkling along the chain Newt has it on (“I don’t want to lose it,” he’d said with a tender smile when Jacob’d first noticed the necklace. Caring for magical animals are certainly not conducive to ring wearing, Jacob learned when his own was summarily swallowed by a mooncalf not even a fortnight after Newt’d slipped it on his finger; it’s why he keeps his on a chain too, tucked out of sight). "We may not be tied the normal way, magical or muggle, but fuck normal. As long as you’ll have me, I’m with you, and don't you forget it."

Newt stares at him for a long moment, his gaze intent. It’s always a little jarring for Jacob, whenever Newt deigns to rest the full extent of his attention on him. It’s not that it’s a rare occurrence, because Jacob seems to surprise Newt into it fairly often; whether with his “odd muggle tendencies” or his unique idiosyncrasies, he’s looked up on more than one occasion to Newt staring helplessly at him, stopped in the middle of whatever he was doing, some mixture of fondness and disbelief on his face. It’s a solid weight, Newt’s attention is, appealing and intense, and Jacob doesn’t know how he doesn’t spontaneously combust under it whenever he catches on.

The tension melts from Newt’s body, and he pushes in closer. Already Jacob can feel the bond tentatively opening again, so he pushes as much of his tender sentimentalities at Newt as he can, breathing deep around the burning affection that filters back. Newt adjusts the case so it doesn’t dig so unpleasantly into Jacob’s skin. His face is flushed again, but he doesn’t look nearly as overwhelmed by the admission as he sometimes gets. “I’ll always want you around, even when I don’t.”

“Well then, guess you’ll be stuck with me for a long time,” Jacob says, basking in the feedback loop of warmth flickering along the bond, round and round and round it goes. It’s nice. Comforting. A balm for his own demons and anxieties. Then, he snorts. “Also, the feeling is mutual.”

Newt breathes some cross between a laugh and a huff, a smile settling small and sweet on his mouth. He tugs on Jacob’s sleeve, his eyes glittering like emeralds in his face. “Come here, you fool.”

"Demanding," Jacob says with faux exasperation, sealing his mouth over Newt’s as his laughter bubbles between them, light and fizzy. They trade a few soft kisses, slow and chaste and close, ever aware that this is neither the time nor place for anything more. They’ll have a more… thorough make up later. This will just have to do for now.

And when Newt moves to pull away, Jacob rubs their noses together just for the laugh it pulls from the younger man, pressing another kiss to his temple, his eyelid, the apple of his cheek as he settles back on the mattress.

After that, conversation flows much more smoothly. All the tension has been sucked out of the room. It no longer feels like he’s pulling teeth just to get a straight answer out of Newt. Considering how long they were separated, they have a lot of things to cover.

“There’ve been attacks all over the city,” Newt informs him, brows furrowed. “The Magical Congress is trying to keep it all under wraps, to keep the muggles off the scent, but they can only _Confund_ so many people. Muggles aren’t going to keep believing all of this destruction is because of gas explosions or electrical malfunctions for much longer.”

“That’s like with my old apartment building,” Jacob says, rubbing at his moustache. “When I asked one of the construction workers, he told me the building had suffered from a gas explosion.”

“Interesting.” Newt’s expression twists into something thoughtful, his gaze distant. Interest not Jacob’s own thrums behind his ribs. “Whatever it is, it’s magical in origin, and anyone with two brain cells to rub together could figure that out. But I can’t think of a single beast or creature that could cause such damage without leaving any sort of trace. No footprints, no fur strands or scales. No magical imprint. Beasts can’t control their magical signature like wizards can.”

“It’s like that woman said this morning. It destroys things and then disappears.”

“It would appear so.”

They fall into contemplative silence, thoughts whirling.

Newt shakes his head. “Ah, but that’s a problem for the Magical Congress and their host of Aurors. We need to round up the rest of our renegade beasts and catch the next train to Arizona. I can only imagine how claustrophobic Frank is getting, no matter how far we’ve expanded the case for him.”

“And what about Credence?” Jacob asks. It’s a very real concern, in his eyes at least.

“What about him?”

"Can we trust him? He’s with those Second Salemers."

Newt shrugs and makes a noncommittal noise, unconcerned. "I don't see why not. He hasn’t proven to be otherwise. We can always _Obliviate_ him if needed."

Jacob mutters, "You know, I wish you took your safety more seriously."

It's an old argument, well-worn and familiar, almost comfortable, though the increasingly ridiculous and fatal situations they’ve found themselves in are decidedly not. They both have a part to play, the reckless fool and the dour mother hen. It’s only the roles that switch, depending on who decided to go and put himself in jeopardy. They are rather invested in each other’s continued existence, for good reason. And though he’d like to think otherwise, Jacob is guilty of being the fool almost as often as Newt. It used to lead to fights, the kind that involve shouting and bruises from hands gripping too hard, particularly when they had first started traveling the world together. There’s just so many ways a situation can go wrong, especially when one is caught in unfamiliar terrains, surrounded by unfamiliar people and creatures. And there are many times that things _have_ gone wrong. They both have a number of scars that they’ve collected over the years.

Now, thankfully, it’s just routine punctuated by exasperated irritation.

"Hm, but then I wouldn't be me. Besides, that's what I have you for, mother hen."

"I guess," Jacob says, a grudging fondness swelling under his sternum. From Newt’s smug smirk, he feels it loud and clear.

Motherfucker.

A knock on the doors startles the both of them. Jacob fumbles off the side of the bed again with a grunt. Damn it, that mattress really is tiny.

The doors squeaks opens just enough for Credence to cautiously poke his head through. “Um, I was told to come in here?”

“Yes, yes, do come in,” Newt says with a wave of his hand.

Credence eases through the sliver of space between the doors, carrying a mug of something sweet and chocolatey smelling.

“Is that hot cocoa?” Jacob asks, sitting up.

Credence glances down, cradling the mug closer like they might try and take it away. “Yes?”

“How come he got hot chocolate, but we didn’t,” Jacob grumbles good naturedly as he stands up, stretching out his back. “Oh!” His shoulder suddenly aches, fiercely (a wound no longer there, no evidence, not even a scar left behind. It’s like when soldiers he’s spoken to describe how they still feel sensations in limbs they no longer have. Is it all in their minds? He doesn’t know). He jams his thumb into the muscle where the wound used to be and rubs until the pain eases somewhat. Newt’s face has gone pinched.

“Do you need the anesthetic?”

“No, no. It’s fine. Just a twinge.”

(Sometimes, he thinks he dreamt the whole metal piercing into his shoulder thing. But then the nerves spasm there like they’ve been electrocuted, or the muscles will knot up so tight he can’t even bear to move his arm without medicinal help, or Newt will look at the unblemished skin where it was, eyes distant, his hand a heavy, possessive weight.

And he knows it wasn't.)

(He’d asked once, if wizards and witches healed with Dittany show similar after-affects. If the pale, taut lipped look Newt gave him is any indication, he thinks not.)

Newt’s eyes narrow on him. He studies him for a second, nods, then hauls himself off the bed and haphazardly stuffs his feet back into his boots.

“Newt.”

“You really must take something, Jacob,” Newt says sternly. His fingers flutter over his own shoulder where Jacob’s hurts. “If you don’t take something now, it’ll just flare up worse later.”

“No.”

The taller man sets the case on the ground and opens it. Jacob glances at Credence, who can’t seem to pick between looking concerned at Jacob and interested in what Newt is doing. “Newt,” Jacob says again, sharper.

“Don’t ‘Newt’ me, Jacob Kowalski. You’re taking something this instant even if I have to hex you.” And he ducks into the case, his footsteps stomping down the ladder with a conviction that tells Jacob he will want to listen to him or else.

Jacob deflates, cutting off the clammy uselessness that always creeps up on him in the face of his not-injury. He hates not having control over his own body, hates being reminded of it. Sure, he could be a lot worse off. He could be dead. But that doesn’t make him feel any better.

Fuck.

He sighs and glances up at Credence’s gob smacked face, the way hot chocolate is nearly spilling out of the mug from his shaking hands. In any other situation, Jacob would chuckle heartily and have a little fun with it; not many people have come into contact with a case such as this, and they need to get their entertainment where they can. But not this time. This time, he just feels tired and in pain.

Whatever.

“Well,” Jacob says, throwing caution to the wind and shocking Credence so badly that he nearly stumbles back into the doors. He gingerly takes the mug from Credence before he burns himself, takes note of the scars the teen is quick to cover in clenched fists, and sets it on the stand by the doors, slides them firmly closed. “I suppose you might as well come along too, if you’d like.”

 

****

 

Newt’s already lost his coat and rolled up his sleeves, his ring hanging loose and swinging against his chest, by the time Jacob has slid down the ladder into the workshop.

“Sit down,” Newt says without preamble and points at the requisite stool without looking away from the plant steeping in one of their chipped teacups.

Jacob knows better than to say no or to complain, but he refuses to sit down just yet, to admit that this is really happening. Instead, he watches Credence fumble his way down the ladder on shaking arms and legs. When the poor boy nearly misses the last peg and brains himself, Jacob goes over to help him, grabbing him firmly by the arm with one hand and offering support with the flat palm of his other on his back. He leans into it unconsciously just like he has every other touch Jacob’s seen him get. He’s starting to think he was wrong in his initial assessment. He’ll need to tread lightly.

Safely on the ground, Credence turns to face him, jumping back a step when he notices how close they are and nearly stumbling through the doorway into the bedroom to the right of the ladder. The workshop’s not exactly what Jacob would call spacious, but the building in its entirety is big enough to house Newt’s workbenches, their bedroom, and Jacob’s kitchen comfortably. It’s enough for them. They have the rest of the case to roam in, after all.

(It hadn’t taken much convincing for Newt to build the two additional rooms off of the workshop. In fact, it hadn’t taken any convincing at all.

They’d been living out of the workshop, their bed squeezed into the corner behind the ladder, Jacob’s baking counter opposite Newt’s workbench, for about a year when they finally decided to expand their living area.

“How many beds does this make?” Jacob asked. The thing was, they almost never had to replace it, the bed that is, despite some of Newt’s more questionable, combustible experiments. Normally. But recently, it felt as if they were getting a new one every other week.

“Nine,” Newt said around the wand clamped between his teeth. The fire had mostly been contained by then, and they’re just cleaning up the mess left behind at this point.

Jacob sighed sadly and patted the singed fluff spewing out from their mattress. “I really liked this one too.”

“Alright, alright!” Newts spit out his wand and shoved it into his back pocket, yanking a sheet of paper out from under a few haphazardly stacked potion bottles. Thank God they’re empty. “If you just wanted a separate bedroom, you should have just said so, love.”

“Um.” Jacob blinked.

“Might as well give you a kitchen too,” Newt muttered to himself, quill in hand and already scribbling.

“Thank you,” Jacob said helplessly, his heart swelling in his chest. He pressed a kiss to Newt’s soot smudged cheek.

Newt waved his hand, but Jacob could see the splotchy blush glowing from under the filth. “For you, darling, anything.”

And that was that.)

“Okay?” Jacob asks, somewhat redundantly, but what else can he say? He backs up to give the boy room, hands up where he can see them.

“Uh—yes.”

“Good.”

Newt clears his throat and gives the chair a pointed, threatening look. Jacob hurries to sit down, cringing when the twinge in his shoulder splinters into something more debilitating.

“I told you,” Newt says without malice and hands him the cup with the anesthetic solution Newt had tinkered to better fit Jacob’s muggle physiology. The sour tang of guilt gurgles in his stomach before Newt gets ahold of it, but Jacob felt it.

He always does.

Of course Newt blames himself for Jacob’s continued pain even though he’s also the reason why Jacob is still here. Who knows if he’d have lived if Newt hadn’t gotten him out of there and healed him. He might have just bled out right there in the trench, or maybe he would have been shot down or blown up in the no-man’s land where he rescued Newt the day they met. But Newt doesn’t see that, doesn’t see that he’d saved Jacob’s life. He only sees where he supposedly came up short, unable to account for how Jacob’s body would react to the Dittany, visibly healed but somehow not quite right. He may hate how the pain makes him feel, but Jacob could never hate Newt for it, could never begrudge the man something he wouldn’t have been able to know. His silly, beautiful man. He grabs Newt’s hand before he can step away and presses a kiss to the scarred knuckles where his ring would be under normal circumstances.

“Thank you,” Jacob says, letting go when Newt gives him a taut smile and turns back to his worktop. Plugging his nose, Jacob drains the cup, coughing when he’s done. It’s one of the most vile things he’s ever tasted, and he’s had the joy of tasting dirt churned up by war and all that entails. It works quickly though, efficiently, the pain easing away in a few minutes as the muscles go numb and slowly unwind.

He hums in relief, circling his shoulder in its socket, testing it and finding it good to go again. “Much better.”

With a thump, the workshop door slams open and in comes Dougal.

“Oh!” Credence shouts.

“Dougal!” Jacob calls, and the demiguise crowds in close to his side, his wide eyes glittering knowingly on Jacob’s shoulder. It really amazes him sometimes, just how intelligent magical creatures can be. “It’s all better now, not to worry,” Jacob says and strokes Dougal’s head until his eyes close contently.

Once satisfied, Dougal passes the stock still Credence without even a look (practically a ringing endorsement, considering Dougal’s magical premonition abilities) in favor of grabbing onto Newt’s pant leg and tugging.

“Yes, Dougal?” Newt asks, but there’s amusement lurking in the corners of his mouth. Besides Jacob, his creatures are one of the few things that can bring Newt out of any funk he falls into. The demiguise grabs Newt’s hand and pulls, and with a laugh and a significant look at Jacob, Newt follows him out of the workshop and into the case proper. He leaves the door open.

“What was that?” Credence’s voice is faint. When Jacob turns to look at him, the poor fella’s backed himself into a corner, his hands clasped, the knuckles bone white under thin skin. His heart twinges. He’s only known the teen for not even half a day, but he’s starting to think there’s something more sinister behind every flinch or fumbling step. Behind the scars on his hands that flash white and hazy over his palms in little glimpses. Even if he _is_ an evil magic-hater, no one deserves whatever this boy has been subjected to. He’ll have to be careful, be gentle, until he knows for sure. Better to be cautious than to hurt the kid even more, even if by accident.

“That was Dougal. He’s a demiguise,” Jacob says. He takes off his jacket to lay it over Newt’s on the work table, rolling his sleeves up as he goes around the workshop, straightening up some of Newt’s experimental mess. Ah, to live with a scientist. "He's quite passive, only bites if he's feeling threatened, and that’s only if you can find him."

“He—he’s good at hiding then?”

“Something like that. He can turn invisible.”

"…I see."

"So nothing to worry about as long as you're nice to him. Most of the creatures we have in here are like that."

"Most?"

"The ones that are a little more... aggressive we keep split off from the rest." Jacob moves to leave, but at the last second, he turns back, keeps his face soft and unjudging. "If you'd like, you can return up the ladder and shut it behind you, but know that once you've left, you won't be able to get back in."

"Oh." Something sad crumples in the boy’s expression.

"Or you can help me with feeding," Jacob says. "Either way, we need to get out of Newt’s workshop. He's got a few... experiments going and I wouldn't want you to get hurt by accident should one spontaneously combust. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it takes us weeks to get the scorch marks out."

Credence’s eyes flit warily around the room like something might happen right then, landing on the open door with something like trepidation. "Is it…safe?"

"Just stick close to me or Newt and you'll be fine. No worries," he says.

"Okay," Credence says, barely even audible.

"That's the spirit."

When they step out, Jacob allows Credence to look his share, the teen peering out from behind him, eyes squinting into the setting artificial sun. The dark haired boy gasps.

They’ve spent a lot of time building their home, Newt and him have, years of delicately spun spell work and sweat and research all culminating into one of the most uniquely individualized housing developments that exists to Jacob’s knowledge. It’s not like those awful zoos here in New York City where they confine animals into tiny enclosures that look as if a strong wind could blow them out of existence, the air permeated with the smell of decay and urine so strong it could knock out a seasoned veteran. No, their home is nothing like that. They make sure of it. Every creature has its place in here, meticulously tailored to fit their differing needs (How much space do they need? How much food to live comfortably? What beasts can they coexist with? And so on and so forth). And he’s proud of it, his home, so he allows himself to feel pleased by Credence’s reaction.

Newt does as well, a smug smirk pulling at his lips, pulling at the scar on his jaw that Jacob wants to thumb over whenever he remembers the reason why it’s there—which is all the time, of course; how could he ever forget—a proud kind of delight vibrating along the bond. Jacob rolls his eyes. He’s already got the feeding shed open and is lugging out the different meals for the beasts in this biome.

Jacob makes his way over, pulling up short when Credence doesn’t follow. “Coming?”

“Ah—yes!” Credence scurries after him, mouth agape, his head whipping everywhere as he tries to take everything in. Jacob can’t suppress the laugh bubbling in his throat, and when Credence gives him a funny look, he just smiles and pats him on the back after a second of contemplation. From what he’s seen, human contact seems to be something the boy craves; he wouldn’t be so quick to lean into it if he wasn’t.

It reminds him of the severely neglected and abused kneazle kittens they took in for a few months, such small and nervous creatures. It took them weeks of rehabilitating them with love and timely feedings before they accepted any affection from them. That case was a little bit extreme, but still.

Eh, but what does he know?

It’s more than a little disheartening and sad to see someone so starved of simple kindness and care the way Credence seems to be though.

Feeding time has always been a bit of a production. There are so many different kinds of creatures with such vastly different tastes, and with two mortally bound bodies and four hands between them, it can be difficult to keep up at times. It’s worth it though, the hard labor and chipped nails and bruises.

They’re worth it.

Newt and Jacob work around each other easily, feeding creatures in the structured order they had to develop or risk accidently forgetting someone. Credence follows quietly just behind, watching them like everything will disappear any second, like he’s afraid it may all just be a dream. He denies their initial attempts to have him join in, choosing instead to observe, though he asks the occasional question. Mostly, he’s the silent shadow at their heels. Newt takes to it easily, offering names and origins and little details to help Credence feel more at ease. He’s probably never seen so many magical creatures from such vastly different backgrounds in a single place before. Jacob keeps an eye on him though, if only to make sure he stays out of trouble and doesn’t get hurt, but he also tries to not let his presence distract him too much.

Years of practice and the bond have certainly gone a long way to improve Newt and his efficiency; it’s at times like this that Jacob is most aware of how he orbits around Newt like the Earth orbiting her Sun, and what a beautiful Sun he has.

God, he’s a sentimental fool.

He catches himself staring at the group of freckles that look like Ursa Major on his wrist, the scar on his forearm from the Niffler, the sweat beading at his temples from the work, and he shakes his head and turns back to the task at hand, stemming the hopeless love he has because while Newt may know he’s a smitten romantic at heart, that doesn’t mean he should beat the man over the head with it. Having his feelings on display can often be a balancing act between sincere honesty and self-consciousness.

He longs for the time, some years down the line more than likely, when such things will no longer matter to him.

He should have known better though.

Newt never makes it a secret, his appreciation at getting a front row seat to Jacob’s love for him. Newt always appreciates the reminder.

And when they’re dumping bags full of over ripe vegetables into the gardens where Henry and his group of apostate gnomes are (the nasty bastard glaring at him the entire time), Newt wraps his fingers, a possessive brand, around Jacob’s wrist and says, “No, let me feel it. Let me feel all of it.”

He doesn’t bother hiding it after that.

Not when they’re filling cups of honey for the billywigs and doxies and Newt sneaks Margaret some vanilla extract instead because it’s her favorite (as Jacob found out one day when the billywig had startled him half to death while he was baking—finding what looks like a dead creature in your batter is an experience Jacob hopes to never repeat again), or when they find Niffler curled up in his gem encrusted tree nook, glaring out at them amid his shiny treasure, and Newt laughs, low and ridiculous and positively radiant because “this must be the first time he’s actually where he’s supposed to be, the little bugger.”

Not even when he leans over Newt’s shoulder, the Occamy chicks squeaking and trilling and wiggling in their woven nest at the prospect of insects, Newt murmuring, “Yes, yes, mummy’s here. Mum’s here.”

Agh, this man. How can someone like him even exist outside of fairytales?

“She looks like a Nancy to me,” Jacob says as the youngest chick winds her way up Newt’s arm to nip at Newt’s collar, demanding more beetles, her tiny, delicate wings flapping uselessly. Jacob scratches her gently on her thin, scaled head until her eyes close into content slits, raising an eyebrow when he notices Newt staring at him with wide eyes.

The younger man blushes, patchy red spots high in his cheeks and ears, affection burning along the bond in a steady burst. He doesn’t look away, his cheeks hollowing with the pleased smile he’s trying to keep contained. “Little Nancy. Yes, I quite like that.”

 _I quite like you_ , Jacob feels, so loud he can practically hear it like a shout right into his ears, and he squeezes Newt’s wrist when he gets the chance just to see the man’s eyes flutter. “I quite like you too.”

“I was thinking we could feed the mooncalves next if that’s alright with you,” Jacob says a little later, snatching the bag of seed pellets out of the air before it can float too far away. “Credence could come with me, unless you want him to stay with you?”

“No, that’s fine. I’ll finish up this section, check on Frank.” He picks up the bucket full of rotting fish innards, his forearms straining, firm and muscular. Jacob wrinkles his nose, but allows himself to appreciate the sight. Grindylows may eat the most foul things, but the hard labor is a good look on Newt’s wiry frame. “But first, I’m going to go see about returning Pickett to his tree.”

Jacob snorts, not even a little surprised when the bowtruckle in question pokes his head out from Newt’s collar and chirrups in a haughty, petulant way. “Good luck with that.”

Newt smirks.

As they make their way to the mooncalves, Jacob does as Newt did, listing the creatures they pass by name. A fwooper flies overhead and squawks at them. The brood of diricawls stare at them with their beady, soulless eyes when they walk by the drop off where they prefer to congregate. Arnold suddenly puffs up on a nearby moss-covered boulder and roars, his throat bulging and vibrating with the force of it.

“We better keep moving,” Jacob says, shooing Credence forward quickly when he slows to gawk at the nundu. Newt and Jacob may be some kind of weird, spineless nundu babies in Arnold’s eyes, tolerated in the sense that he hasn’t killed them yet because they’re the bringers of food, but it’s uncertain how he’ll take Credence’s presence. Death by nundu poison is not a fun way to go, so he’s heard.

They meander through the different biomes, the forest surrounding their workshop falling away to the savannah biome as they duck through the magically reinforced partition, the artificial sun having set an hour ago to be replaced by an equally artificial moon. They pass through the seemingly empty plain where Lila usually gallops about, blowing things up at her leisure and swimming in the deep pool that took Jacob weeks to dig out properly (looks like he was right about her escaping then). The savannah gives way to dessert so seamlessly that Jacob wouldn’t ever notice if it weren’t for the red marker they put on all the dividers’ openings (and Credence definitely doesn’t, the boy stumbling awkwardly through the sand, poor kid. He puts out a hand to help him find his balance, and after a second’s hesitation, Credence accepts). And there’s Eleanor off in the distance, contently licking her feelers about one of her newborn calves, her mate only a few feet further back with the other calf in the strange pocket dimension expanding out of the partition. Jacob mentally tics off four more beasts, here and accounted for.

“Mr. Kowalski?” Credence asks as he trails after him.

“Yes?”

“Are all of these creatures yours?”

“Not really. For the most part, we’re nurturing them back to health with the hope of returning them to their proper environments someday.” Jacob leads Credence up the tall burrow where the mooncalves make their homes. “Or they’re endangered, so we’re trying to keep them from going extinct.”

It doesn’t take long for the mooncalves to notice them, and when they do, they crowd in close around Jacob’s legs. He counts them off as he distributes handful after handful of the floating (magical food is weird as hell) pellets among the undulating heads of the mooncalves, their gaping fish mouths plucking the food out of the air. He pauses, then he offers Credence the open bag. Maybe he’ll accept this time. He looks like he might, if the lip biting and edging closer is any indication. “Wanna try feeding them?”

Credence’s shoulders shoot up where he stands just on the outside of the feeding circle, but Jacob waits it out, keeps his face sincere and open.

“It’s alright if you don’t want to. But I thought you might like to try,” he says when the silence has gone on a beat too long.

Credence finally nods wordlessly, his expression struggling between hesitance and fear. He accepts the food into his shaking hands and is immediately assaulted by hungry mooncalves, their little, stupidly adorable faces bumping into the dark haired boy’s legs as they mewl. Credence shoots him a terrified look.

Jacob tries to look reassuring. “Don’t worry. They don’t bite. They may nom at your clothes a little bit, but they don’t have any teeth.” He pats one on the head, and when all it does it turn around to thump against him for more, he shrugs. “See? Harmless.”

Credence says nothing, but the corner of his mouth twitches, so Jacob decides it was worth the effort.

“Good job,” Jacob says when the bag’s run empty and the mooncalves have settled into content groups to stare at the moon with their strange bulging eyes. He hesitates for a second, but beside that first time, Credence has only ever leaned into any contact he’s seen. Resolved, he presses a firm hand to Credence’s shoulder.

And the teen just looks at him for a moment, his breath held, before it all blows out in one wavering gust, his body relaxing into the touch. “Thank you, Mr. Kowalski,” he says, quiet but genuine.

“Not a problem.” He glances at his wrist watch, notes the time. “Newt’ll probably be with Octavia back towards the forest biome. She’s a baby marmite—not the nasty British food. She’s the cutest alien looking creature in the world. Why don’t you head over there while I finish up with the beasts here?”

“Sure.” He moves to leave, but he pauses, looking at Jacob with a tilted head.

“What?”

“It’s just—you haven’t used any, erm, magic, at all,” Credence mumbles, his gaze dropping off to the side. Jacob blinks.

“Oh, well, that’s because I don’t have any magic.”

Out of everything he’s seen here today, that seems to be the thing that shocks Credence the most. “You—you mean you’re not magical at all? Miss Tina mentioned you were a no-maj, um, but I wasn’t sure—”

“Yep, not a single magical thing about me—well, more or less.”

“More or less?”

Jacob shrugs. Better to not mention anything about the bond. The teen hasn’t really given any indication that he’s a magic hating ass, has only really shown himself to be a timid, curious boy, likely with a sad, awful past, but all the same. He’s known him for not even a full day. Better to err on the side of caution.

“But I thought no-majs weren’t allowed to associate with wizards?”

“No-maj? Ah, yeah, that’s their word for muggle, right? Me and Newt met a long time ago, during the war in France. You remember the war, don’t you?” And when he nods, Jacob continues, “Most places don’t have any problems with me knowing things, and the areas that do tend to honor the British Ministry’s ruling that I have every right to know as Newt’s… partner. For the areas that disregard even that, we tend to fly under their radar or avoid them entirely.” Much to Newt’s endless frustration. Not at Jacob, of course, but there isn’t always a safe way for them to roam about a major city of a country who keeps the whole magic thing heavily regulated and kept secret, as shown by the United States. Disguises and spells and lies about who Jacob is only go so far sometimes; though the bond has helped with some of these places, it hasn’t helped with all.

It’s gotten them into its own fair share of trouble.

“I see,” Credence says, his eyebrows furrowed.

“Anyway…” Jacob clears his throat awkwardly. “I’ll finish up here. You head back over to Newt. We’re going to need to go round up the rest of the beasts before they tear the city apart.”

“Okay.” Jacob watches Credence stumble the misleading distance back towards where they came from, rubbing absently at his sternum where a contented warmth is burning before he turns back to the mooncalves.

So much to do, so little time. If only they could manipulate time the way they can the space of the case.

 

****

 

He’s in the middle of scratching Eleanor’s leather side, searching for any little parasitic hanger-ons that aren’t supposed to be there, when he suddenly feels a snap of panic through the bond.

Oh God, did someone get hurt? Did Credence do something? He knew it, that boy is nothing but trouble, he should have never trusted him, Jacob thinks as he rushes through the landscape, following the pull of the bond through the divider into the ice biome. He’s not even two steps in when he sees them, Newt standing protectively in front of the floating obscurus, Credence backed up against the blurry divide that keeps the biome’s harsh conditions separate from the warmer sections.

"Are you okay?" Jacob asks Newt urgently, moving to stand beside him, touching his arm where gooseflesh has broken out from the cold winds.

“I’m fine,” Newts says, mouth flat. “He almost released it.”

"I'm sorry. I-I just—what is that?" The teen’s eyes look sunken into his stricken face, and he can't seem to stop looking at the floating black mass behind them.

"It's an obscurus,” Newt says, relaxing slightly. Without looking at him, the taller man palms the middle of Jacob’s back and sends a complicated tangle down the bond that Jacob can only roughly translate into _it’s okay, everything’s fine_. Jacob allows himself to relax a little as well. “It's what happens when a magical being is forced to contain their magic, to repress it. It takes on a life of its own, and the person often dies because of it."

"What is it doing here?"

"We found a girl in Sudan… We tried to help her, but in the end it didn't take." Newt’s face hardens. "We managed to keep the obscurus intact, but it can't function properly without a host."

"How old was she? The girl?" Credence asks, his voice edged with a frantic need, but for what? What could he possibly need? Answers? But why does it matter?

"Eight. The few recorded cases of obscurial activity are from children, and they rarely lived into adulthood before they were torn apart."

"We're hoping that studying it will help us help kids in the future. No one deserves to be torn apart by their magic," Jacob says. 

"So you just keep it here?" Credence asks, strangled. "To experiment on it?"

"No, no. Don't misunderstand. We have it here to observe it, but more importantly, to protect it. If people knew we had the remnants of one, they would try to take advantage of it, to use it for evil." Newts face shutters closed, but his tone is soft. "This was once a little girl. We could never let that happen to her."

Credence’s expression collapses into something complicated, as though he's been punched in the gut and given a gift all at once.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Jacob asks, eyes darting between his partner and the dark haired boy.

"Yes, yes I think so." Credence gives him and Newt an unreadable look, but then his shoulders slump and he nods. He follows them out of the case without any issues, so Jacob decides not to worry about it too much.

He worries enough as it is, as Newt likes to lovingly remind him.

“It’s about time we collected the rest of our precious beasts, don’t you think?” Newt asks as he tugs on his blue coat.

“But how? The sisters are sure to notice if we leave out the front door…”

It takes a minute of thinking, but they eventually end up sneaking out through one of the windows in their room, slipping down the fire escape to the street below so as not to give themselves away. It takes a little more time and effort than apparition would, but it doesn’t make nearly as much noise.

“Are you sure about this?” Credence asks, a half step behind them as they jog across the empty street. He’d certainly taken some convincing, and they’d nearly left him behind, but apparently the call of adventure was too much for him.

“Of course we are,” Newt says. “Now that we know which creatures are missing, we need to capture them as soon as possible.”

“Could one of the escaped beasts really do that much damage?”

Jacob snorts, a huffing breathless thing. “Lila is several tons of explosives waiting to happen. We’re lucky nothing’s happened yet.”

“That we know of,” Newt tacks on. “Now, where in this blasted city would there be enough open space to entice her, preferably with a fairly large water source.”

“Central Park,” Credence and Jacob answer simultaneously. The teen blinks at him, but Jacob just smirks in return. He may not have lived here for almost a decade, but he still knows his stuff.

“Alright, let’s head there first. You both lead the way.”

The sounds of their shoes hitting pavement echoes along the buildings. It’s sort of disconcerting, considering how lively and bustling New York normally is. All of the destruction happening around the city must really be scaring people if not even a few night strollers are out.

“You there!” A masculine voice shouts off to their right.

Oh, spoke too soon.

The three of them stumble to a stop, and Jacob whips his head around. Two police officers are coming their way, their faces varying degrees of irritation. Is this really happening? He blinks rapidly, but the policemen remain clear and real. So, not a dream or drug induced haze.

“Fuck,” Jacob says.

“My sentiments exactly,” Newt responds, sliding just behind Jacob’s shoulder. Guess it’s on him to deal with the men then. Lucky him.

“O-oh, hello officers. Lovely night tonight?” Behind him, Newt groans, soft and disappointed, but what could he have expected? Jacob may have steady hands, but he’s never had a witty tongue. Give him thirty minutes and maybe he’d think of something, but not on a dime like this. There’s a reason why he never thought to be an actor or something as a child. He turns and glares at Newt, eyebrows raised as if to ask _like you can you do any better?_

“What are you three doing out here? Don’t you know it’s dangerous? There’s a reason why the mayor set a curfew,” the one with a moustache huffs.

“Well, you see—”

“I-I’m sorry, sir,” Credence speaks up. His eyes are down cast, his face crinkled into a grimace. “There’s a Second Salemers meeting, for the New Salem Philanthropic Society?”

Jacob blinks. He turns an incredulous look at Credence, but the boy just looks desperate and uncomfortable.

The two officers share looks of distaste. They’ve definitely heard of them, and Jacob honestly can’t say he doesn’t understand the feeling.

“You’re that woman’s boy,” the other officer says, his eyes narrowing under thick set eyebrows. From his mouth, it sounds like an accusation.

 _That woman_.

It’s not hard to guess who he means by that.

“Yes,” Credence says, and for the first time since Jacob’s met him, there’s a blankness to him like he’s retreated away into his head. His stance is so rigid, Jacob’s afraid one touch could shatter him. And he shouldn’t be surprised anymore, to find out that Credence is that awful woman’s child, but it does. It’s different, to think of him as merely a follower to the cause versus the spawn of its bloodthirsty leader. This changes things, a little, in Jacob’s mind. If there’s one thing he’s learned over the course of his life, it’s that children are forced into things they don’t agree to all the time by their parents. And the idea of this skittish, timid boy joining a cult like the Second Salemers of his own volition seems so conflicting, doesn’t quite fit in Jacob’s head the way a boy whose mother makes him participate does.

“One of her merry band of freaks, you are,” the officer continues with a cruel curl to his mouth.

From the corner of his eye, he sees the teen’s hands clench into fists, the knuckle bones stark and pointy. Something flickers in the spaces there, something agitated and wild.

Perhaps there’s more truth to what he said about being magical.

A chord plucks protective and vicious in his chest, drawing his attention to Newt whose face has gone steely and intense.

Jacob’s never been afraid of Newt, not even when he found out the man wasn’t what he thought he was, that he was actually a magical being with tremendous and terrifying abilities that only his morals kept him from using for his own gain. But when he gets like this, he’s a whole different man, scathing and quick to pierce any weakness he can find, his eyes like glowing coals in his face, his mouth a cutting, biting weapon. It’s how he was when Jacob had been slated for obliviation. It’s how he gets, sometimes, when they find creatures is abysmal conditions at the hands of people who mean them harm. It’s the only time Jacob can really reconcile Newt, the eccentric, passionate man he’s bound himself to and Newt Scamander, the pureblood from a powerful family who grew up in a section of society known for its inherent cruelty, who endured the worst sort of treatment because he just didn’t fit that mold. Except for a few of the ways he does.

It’s then that Jacob decides to hell with it. If Credence turns out to be as awful as his mother, so be it. They’ll deal with it then. But if not, they’ve got a poor, damaged boy in their care, one who seems as starved for affection as Newt was when they first started stepping out, probably more so. And he’s not going to let some sick bully mess with him, not while he’s here to do something about it.

No matter how much he wants to let Newt verbally tear these men to pieces, doing so would likely lead to their arrest, so he takes a step forward, draws their eyes to him.

He may not be tall, but he knows a thing or two about dealing with fucks like this man. His _babcia_ made sure of that. He smiles, sharp and full of teeth. “Acting like a dick won’t make yours any bigger, sir.”

Okay, well, they might still go to jail anyways. He hears Newt choke behind him, a gleeful, grim amusement thrumming proudly behind his ribs. He’s glad one of them is getting something good out of this.

The man’s face turns a deep, concerning purple and he splutters uselessly for a second, his partner gaping wide eyed beside him. “Y-you filthy ingrate—”

The officer makes to move closer, to arrest him or punch him, Jacob’s not sure, but an unexpected growl pulls the man up short. It pulls them all up short.

All five of them look to the source where, standing just off to the left, its head cocked to the side, is a lion.

“What the bloody hell?” Newt says.

“She must have gotten into the zoo,” Jacob whispers. The officers seem to have forgotten them for the moment, even with the assault upon the one’s masculinity. A lion is a bit more life threatening, Jacob supposes, though he’s sure some would argue that. He never thought a lion would be a good diversion from arrest; he’ll need to keep that in mind for the future, if they ever find themselves in a position like this again. All the same, he’s never seen a lion up close before, and he doesn’t exactly want to now.

“Grab hold of me,” Newt says. Blindly, he reaches back for Newt’s hand, finds it, and there’s that annoying pull behind his bellybutton.

Newt’s taken them a couple streets over, Jacob can tell, when he finally finds his footing again against the face of a building.

“That’s a good lad,” Newt says, rubbing Credence’s back with the hand not holding the case as the teen retches into a lone bush struggling to grow on a tiny patch of un-cemented ground. “You should be fine momentarily. You’re already faring much better than Jacob did that second time.”

“What about the first time?” Credence asks eventually, still faintly green around the edges, as he takes the proffered handkerchief Jacob hands him.

Newt stiffens a little, an echo of desperation tingling along the bond, so Jacob answers in his stead with a shrug. “I was a little out of it the first time.”

“…I see.”

“Anyways, shall we?”

They don’t run into anyone else on their way to the zoo, though they do stumble past more than a few non-magical beasts. The police will have their hands full rounding all of them up, Jacob thinks as an Ostrich races by them. From there, it’s almost stupidly easy to find Lila once they’re in the zoo: they just follow the noise of humming and crashes, and there she is, in all seven some tons of glory.

“I’ve got this one,” Newt says without a glance back, dabbing erumpent musk on his wrists from a vial he slips back into his pocket.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” Credence asks quietly, his fingers wrapped around the wire of the destroyed macaw cage they’re hiding behind.

“Nah,” Jacob says. He rubs his hands together and blows on them. Why does New York have to be so damn cold? “Newt’s always been better with the mating dances than me.”

“Mating dance?”

“Shh, it’s about to start.”

And start it does, in all of its entertaining glory.

The first time Newt demonstrated his extensive knowledge of magical mating dances, Jacob broke down laughing so hard he’d scared the poor creature away. He just couldn’t contain himself, not in the face of the ridiculous motions Newt was performing, all in the name of science. He still can’t sometimes. He can’t even recall what it was they had been observing, remembering instead how Newt had been positively mortified when he’d stumbled his way back to where Jacob had collapsed into fits in the Amazonian underbrush, his face stained red clear to the roots of his hair. It had taken more than a few kisses and preening compliments to erase the embarrassed pout from Newt’s face. And Jacob had even gone out of his way to learn a few mating dances of his own to help with some of the more easily seduced beasts and, of course, to seduce one magizoologist himself.

(Jacob’s found there isn’t actually that much of a difference between the two. You show your best side, wiggle your ass a little, and wear a scent that is particularly appealing to whoever you’re seducing.

“There’s a little more to it than that, Jacob,” Newt objected. “It takes much more finesse.”

“Really? So, you’re saying you don’t want any of this?” Jacob asked, turning just a little to the right with a cocked eyebrow and a slow roll of his hips.

Newt sputtered, his freckles standing out stark against his flushed cheeks. That didn’t stop him from crowding in close though, hands squeezing Jacob’s face as he hissed, “This proves nothing.”

And then he dragged Jacob to their bed.

Perhaps there’s more to Jacob’s theory after all.)

“Thank you, Mr. Kowalski… for before, with the police,” Credence says abruptly. Jacob tears his eyes away from the way Newt is shaking his backside at Lila to look at the teen, shy and a little lost looking, but he holds eye contact with Jacob for what feels like the first time.

Warmth prickles in his chest, pleased and gratified and honored.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Jacob says. “Me and Newt both know how bad things can get. We won’t let that happen to you while we’re around.”

“All the same.”

“Of course. And call me Jacob,” he says. “No need to be so formal after everything we’ve been through, yeah?”

Credence blinks, but then a tiny, sweet smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. Jacob’s heart squeezes a little bit. They’ve come so far, and he can’t help but return the sentiment with a smile of his own. “Okay.”

“Aha!”

Credence’s head snaps back to Newt, but Jacob’s not worried. The glow of triumph is heavy in his gut.

“All right, gentlemen,” Newt says, making his way over. “One down, two to go.”

Bentley proves to be the easiest to catch. The winged horse was grazing by the old lake turned ice rink in the middle of Central Park, unconcerned and calm as ever as he nibbled on the few strands of grass poking through the snow cover. All it took was some nudging and a handful of carrot sticks to get him back in the case. He’s always been a friendly, gentle beast though, so more luck to them.

Athena, Diana, and Gabby nearly scare the utter shit out of Credence when he almost steps on their small, coiled form somewhere around Fourth Avenue. They’d been wandering about for nearly an hour when the teen shouted and stumbled through the snow in surprise. A fitting response considering the lack of snakes, let alone three headed ones, that make their home in New York. Gabby hisses violently, her ruby red eyes glistening in the street light’s glow, and strikes at the delicate flesh of Credence’s bare ankle. It’s a good thing Newt manages to pull Credence out of the way of her fangs in time. Runespoor venom is often times fatal, and even the great Newt Scamander has yet to find an anti-venom that works consistently, though not for lack of trying.

“Oh, poor sweethearts,” Jacob fusses. There’s a vague noise of disbelief, and when he looks up, Credence has both eyebrows raised. “I mean, I’m glad you’re alright. Of course I am, but you did almost step on them. They’re just a baby, you know. You’re lucky Gabby didn’t bite you right off the bat.”

“He is right, you know,” Newt says with a shrug. The teen looks between the two of them before his gaze snags on the snake staring back at him. He slowly nods.

“Now, come along, Athena. You really must get back into the case. You know this,” Jacob says to the left most head. She eyes him warily and cocks her spined head in deliberation, her forked tongue flicking in and out. Gabby hisses at her in what sounds like disagreement, and Diana seems to do the equivalent of rolling her eyes, which Jacob has found is really more of a slow, pointed blink for them. “It’s much warmer in the suitcase. I know how much you three hate the cold,” Jacob adds and takes the case from Newt. He sets it open in front of them, warm and tempting, and tries to look encouraging.

The three heads seem to consider this. Jacob holds his breath.

A moment later, they slither inside, but not without some grumbling from Gabby. He shuts the lid the second their tail disappears into the darkness. Shouldn’t take any chances.

The locks flicked closed, all three of them sigh in relief.

“That’s it. Everyone present and accounted for,” Jacob says.

“Thank Merlin.” Newt takes the case back. “Maybe now we can actually do what we came here to.”

“Mr. Scamander!” And there’s Tina sprinting towards them, Queenie hot on her heels, their long coats billowing out behind them like wings. Faintly, Jacob worries they might slip and fall on the snow slick street, but mostly, he’s just hoping they aren’t about to be sort of arrested… again.

Newt’s face darkens. “Spoke too soon.”

Jacob elbows him in the side. Potential arrest or not, they’re still dames who deserve respect. "Be nice," he says with a stern look.

Newt rolls his eyes, but his tone is only colored with exasperation when he calls, “What now, Miss Goldstein?”

The closer the women get though, the more Jacob thinks something has seriously gone wrong. Their faces are drawn and frantic, the color high in their cheeks from exertion and something that looks a lot like fear.

“What happened?” Jacob asks when they finally reach them. The two of them stagger to a stop, their heeled shoes skidding along the pavement as they gasp for breath. How long had they been running?

“One of your creatures murdered a no-maj!" Tina says around a heaving breath, her glare a deadly accusation. If looks could kill…

Wait.

Hold on.

What?

"What?" Newt demands, his eyes narrowed.

"A no-maj was found dead in his apartment, and it’s obvious to anyone with even a shred of magic that it was a magical beast that did it. It _had_ to have been one of your escaped creatures.”

"Almost ate the poor dear whole, apparently. An arm was all that was left." Queenie says and visibly shudders.

Jacob and Newt exchange a look, confusion slushing between them. Of their escaped beasts, the only creature that could have possibly done this would have been the runespoor, but even that didn’t make any sense. Human flesh wasn’t particularly appetizing to a runespoor, too chewy or so Newt’s told him. The younger runespoors much preferred large rodents whenever they were hungry (and though these preferences change as they get older and turn into automobile sized terrors, they still prefer larger game over mealy, gross humans), and they often gorged themselves enough that they could go weeks between meals. They may have one stomach, but with three heads to feed, they might as well have more.

Athena and the gals hadn’t looked like they’d eaten anything recently too, much less almost an entire person, and Jacob had just fed them while they were still stranded in the middle of the Atlantic. He frowns, asks, "How do you know?"

"We stopped by the Congress building before we came looking for you three, and it was obvious that something had all the Aurors stirred up," Tina explains.

"It's all they could think about," Queenie adds.

"When did all this happen?" Jacob asks.

"About half an hour ago."

"We've been looking for you since we heard—"

"Where?" Newt asks, and Jacob can already see the gears turning in his head. Something isn’t right here and they both know it.

"Does it matter?" Tina asks incredulously. “There are more important things we could be talking about, like how _your_ creature killed a no-maj—”

"Yes, it is important," Newt interrupts through gritted teeth. The tension in his jaw is painfully obvious. It makes Jacob’s ache in sympathy just looking at it. He tries to ease it a little, sends little soothing bursts along the bond, but all Newt does is pat distractedly at Jacob’s arm, his spine ramrod straight and close to snapping under the stress. Newt takes any accusation against his beasts very seriously. Jacob does to, of course he does, but Newt definitely put himself into the first line of defense, every time.

The witch and wizard glare at each other for several seconds, and Jacob can almost see the agitated blur of their magic lashing out around them, their edges hazy and distorted in an unnatural way, a muted buzzing in the air like static. The hairs on the back of Jacob’s neck stand up. Maybe this is where muggles get the idea of auras?

Beside him, Queenie giggles, small and fragile, and shakes her head. Her blonde hair bounces about her lovely face. “Not quite darling, but that’s an interesting thought,” she says, and this seems to break whatever battle of wills Tina and Newt seem to be having because Tina grudgingly admits, "It happened at an apartment complex on Pike Street."

There’s a choking noise behind him, and all three of them turn to look at Credence. The teen’s gone white as a sheet.

“Credence?”

“I know that building. It’s down the street from the Second Salem church.”

Tina’s expression softens a bit, the most he’s ever seen, and it’s like she’s a whole different person, the one he’s only caught glimpses of from behind her reserved façade. “Don’t worry, Credence. They would have quarantined the area off and evacuated the people in any potential danger.”

Newt huffs, scrubbing the hand not holding the case through his fringe, muttering, "That makes no sense though."

"How does _what_ not make sense?" Tina asks and pins a hard stare at Newt. She looks two seconds away from pulling her hair out in frustration, Jacob thinks and only startles a little bit when Queenie murmurs her agreement to that thought.

"Because,” Newt says, slow and controlled, his irritation a vague itch under Jacob’s skin, “we only had one creature left when the muggle was murdered, and we found them right here. They couldn’t have moved from one side of the city to the other in the half an hour since the incident. It’s just not possible."

"It could have been another of your creatures then."

"But it wasn't. I know every creature, every beast that inhabits our case and we have all of them, safe and sound.”

“Maybe you miscounted.”

“I didn’t.” Newt says, sharp and mocking. “Even if I had, for some inexplicably ridiculous reason, then Jacob would have known. With how many creatures we have, it’s definitely a perk to have a partner to help keep track of everything.”

"Then what in Deliverance Dane did it?" Tina crosses her arms. “Since you seem to be the leading expert here.”

Here, Jacob cuts in, because if he doesn’t, he’s ninety percent sure this will all devolve into a petty argument, and then where would they be? "Does the Magical Congress not know?"

Tina’s glower doesn’t waver from Newt’s, but she at least deigns to answer. "Not that we know of."

"I can probably figure it out if you gave me more information, you know, since I’m the leading expert and all—"

"No, no, absolutely not. You and your creatures have done enough damage! I saw the zoo! I should arrest you," and here she turns her glare on Jacob, "both of you!"

"Then you'll have to take me too," Credence says, voice wavering the smallest bit, but his face is determined, unmovable. Tina must see it too, because she finally faces away from Newt, puts her hands out in a placating gesture.

"You did nothing wrong, Credence."

"But I'm part of the reason why the creatures got released in the first place. If it wasn’t for me, you both wouldn’t be having this argument."

"But Credence—"

"No."

“Teenie, why don’t we give them the chance. It sounds like Newt may already be on the right track,” Queenie says, putting a gentle hand on Tina’s arm.

“Sorry, but I’d really appreciate it if you stopped doing that, please,” Newt says and he’s stiff, a little knot of discomfort in Jacob’s chest. He pushes in slightly closer, their arms brushing, and offers a lopsided smile. The smile he gets in return is pursed, but a smile nonetheless, so Jacob accepts it.

“Sorry, sugar. I can’t help it.”

Tina looks a little pinched, and she doesn’t look happy at all, but she looks at the four of them before bursting, "Alright, fine! Let's go."

When they apparate this time, Credence seems to fair better, though he still looks a little green in the cheeks. Jacob focuses on that as he adjusts again, _again_ , why can’t they just walk everywhere or take one of those damned automobile monstrosities, to the rolling of his stomach. At this rate, it really will be like that second time.

Ugh.

“Everyone make it alright?” Tina whispers. They all make noises of confirmation. They’re in a shadowed alleyway, but even from here, Jacob can here the distressed and irritated sounds indicative of a crowd. He peeks around the corner, and behind him, he can feel the others doing the same, their warmth an appreciated comfort from the chill hanging in the air.

It’s contained chaos, muggle and magical alike. The muggles are crowded out in front of the building, most of them in some state of informal dress, many of them in their pajamas and robes and slippers, though there are a few in rumpled suits and gowns, and they’re talking amongst themselves. There's an ambulance and a fire truck and the police all parked out front, but none of the officers or emergency personnel attempt to enter the building. In fact, they look more concerned with containing the increasingly vexed crowd. But why wouldn’t they be inside doing their jobs?

Oh.

Yes, that would make sense.

Above him, Queenie and Newt smother laughs of amusement, though Newt’s cuts off abruptly with an annoyed sort of flash across the bond.

Jacob snorts.

It looks as if the Aurors have the entire building quarantined off with some kind of near invisible barrier that Jacob can only just barely see if he squints, his eyes almost watering with it. (But he _can_ see it, something Newt has told him should be impossible, a look of amazement on his face the first time Jacob brought it up, a few weeks out from their self-enforced bond-acclimatization isolation, his hands clutching desperately at Jacob’s wrists. Jacob can practically feel Newt’s shuddering pulse through his fingertips.

“Maybe it’s because of the bond?” Jacob had offered, confused, but not really all that concerned. Except for how he was, a little, concerned that is, but he’s pretty sure that concern is Newt’s. That’s how it tastes, on the back of his tongue, something bitter and thick and not his own, and even with all that time to get used to this, it’s still so very odd to feel. But, well… In a world of magic and mayhem, being able to see some of it that he normally shouldn’t be able to would probably come in handy. It did just save his life, so.

“Perhaps,” Newt said, but Jacob knew he kept a close eye on him for a while after, just in case. And he called _him_ a mother hen. Please.)

He can tell there's some kind of spell on it too, because whenever a muggle gets too close, they blink rapidly and back up a little, looking queasy. The muggles must have been evacuated, the officers and personnel _Confund-_ ed to keep them out of the way but still doing something useful while the Aurors do what they need to inside.

"They say someone smelled gas," Jacob hears one of the residents say, her accent crisp and cold in her irritation.

"I heard someone died," another puts forth.

"Maybe it's the culprit who caused the other gas explosions," a woman in hair curlers rushes out. At this, the crowd gets restless, the murmurs getting worse and increasing in volume as people argue.

“Those were gas leaks, nothing more,” a hefty man in a bathrobe says curtly on the outskirts of the crowd.

“Oh, do fuck off, Joshua. Everyone knows most of those buildings should have been fine. It had to have been a person who set them off,” a tall, rumpled gentleman says.

“Should we do something?” Credence asks quietly. He looks a bit drawn when Jacob looks at him.

“No,” Tina says. “Leave them to the Aurors. They’ll take care of it.”

Jacob ignores the bolt of petulant disagreement he can feel vibrating along the bond and says, before Newt can get a chance, “We need to get in there."

"But how? We can't apparate around the barrier."

Queenie turns and looks at Credence. She beams. "That just might work. Nice thinking, honey."

"God, I’ve always hated the subway,” Jacob mutters as they trudge along the bowels of the transit system. “Never liked it down here. Always feel like I'm about to get crushed by a thousand tons of rock and death." He’s never actually walked near the tracks before, and he’s finding the experience just as disconcerting as standing at the station, more so when a rat scampers in front of them through the light of Tina’s _Lumos_ (way better than flashlights, honestly). It smells damp and grimy and rotting, the scent wafting into his face every once in a while with a breeze that he cannot account for. Where is it coming from? Where could it be going? What in the hell was that noise? Something is leaking nearby, the _drip drip_ an accompaniment to their shuffling steps.

Hadn’t people been complaining about bizarre disturbances down here? All the more reason to leave as soon as possible. They should leave right now. They’re lucky they haven’t died yet from the mold alone.

He looks at Newt. “Reminds me of the war, before I met you, now that I think about it.”

"Don't worry, darling. I won't let that happen to you," Newt says, seemingly absentminded. The hand pressing nice and reassuring at his side says otherwise. Jacob tugs on the fashionable coat strap at Newt’s back, warmth bouncing back and forth between them, amplified.

Queenie sighs almost dreamily, and Newt flinches minutely.

“Sorry. You’re both just so easy to read like this, even with your whole Britishness,” Queenie says.

"I think this is it?" Tina says up ahead, her wand pointing up at the cracked ceiling.

"So,” Jacob drags the word out, “what, do we dig our way in or… I mean, I’m pretty decent with a shovel." He mimes a digging motion. Between keeping up the trenches and keeping the environment of the case updated to the needs of their beasts, Jacob’s had plenty of practice.

Queenie giggles. "No silly, we can apparate in this way."

Credence blinks. "But I thought—"

"The spell they used only works up until it makes contact with a solid object, in this case, the ground," Newt explains patiently. “We can only apparate around it if we’re at a point where the barrier isn’t. If we’d tried going around it from a place where it’s sealed, then we would have rebounded off, which is an extremely unpleasant experience.”

“Oh,” Credence says and shoots Jacob a horrified look. Jacob nods knowingly, because oh yeah, fuck that. Rebounding off something is ten times worse than anything Jacob can think of, and he’s been splinched and had shrapnel almost kill him.

“The Aurors aren't concerned with anyone coming in the proverbial back door. They're more concerned with finding the beast and not letting it out,” Tina tacks on, and from the corner of his eye, he sees Newt pin her with a look of surprise. When he looks at him with his eyebrows raised in a _did that just happen_ fashion, Jacob coughs to cover his amusement, though Newt surely feels it anyway, his face falling flat and deadpan, shaking his head like he thinks Jacob’s positively ridiculous.

Well, it’s not like he’s wrong.

Tina checks her watch. “Alright, so. They’re probably getting ready to leave right about now. There’s only so much time they can spend on this before they have to let the no-majs back in. They’ve probably procured all the available evidence to be found by this point anyways,” she says with a shrug. “We can probably apparate directly into the apartment it happened in without any trouble. It's on the fourth floor, room 426.”

“Got it,” Newt says and laces his fingers with Jacob’s.

“Wait, what?” Jacob asks before they get the chance to leave. The four turn to stare at him with varying degrees of curiosity.

“Yes?” Tina asks.

“So, what, even if they don’t find the creature, they’re still going to let people back in?”

“Well, sure. If they haven’t found it by now, they have no reason to keep the building quarantined off, and you saw those no-majs. They wanted back in.” She stares at him like he’s grown a second head.

“But what if it’s still in there. That wouldn’t exactly be safe. Shouldn’t they be kept away until they know for sure that it’s gone?”

“If it was still there, they would have found it by now. The creature was probably gone long before the man was found dead. That’s how it tends to go.” She waves her hand. “This is all just standard procedure.”

“But what about the barrier.”

“More to keep no-majs out while the Aurors do preliminary searches. It’s easier to search for evidence without pesky no-majs running suspiciously underfoot.” She shakes her head. “Honestly, Mr. Kowalski, we do know how to do our job, you know.”

Jacob purses his mouth, but doesn’t say anything. There’s just something bothering him about the whole situation. A man gets eaten alive, _literally consumed_ by a magical beast of some sort, and they look around for an hour and then just let people come back in? When a man died suspiciously in his apartment block when he was ten years old, the police had asked residents of that floor to find a temporary home for the night, just in case. And this is somehow ten times worse than what had turned out to be a homicide spurred on by a jealous lover. This is a creature that muggles might not even be able to see, let alone properly defend themselves against. They wouldn’t even know what to look for… But, well, maybe it really is gone. He really hopes, for everyone’s sake, that it is.

“Hey,” Newt says, low and close and tugging at Jacob’s hand as the others disappear with a crack. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” Jacob replies. “Just, I don’t know. Am I overthinking things?”

“Maybe.” Newt looks at him for a moment from under his fringe, then squeezes at Jacob’s fingers. “Or maybe you’re not. Be careful?”

“Of course. You too.”

They reappear beside Tina in what must be the kitchen. The witches have their wands drawn and at the ready, but there’s clearly no one there, everything still and silent and dark inside the apartment. Outside, Jacob can hear the barrier begin to come down with a crackle at the edge of his senses. He tentatively looks out the window over the sink. Below them, the muggles have started filtering back in. His mouth thins into a pursed line.

“God, I hope they found it,” Jacob mutters. It feels like a bad idea to talk in anything above a whisper, like to do so would be a disrespect to the dead, or maybe because the beast really might still be here. Or maybe some other reason.

"Do you really think it's still here?" Credence asks him, his voice pitched soft and quiet, probably sensing the strange, quiet mood.

Tina huffs and says, clear and normal as can be, "It shouldn't be. As I said, the Auror department is very thorough. Nothing to worry about."

“Except when it's not,” Newt says under his breath as he peers into the fridge. Tina shoots him an irritated look.

They spread out, start exploring the different rooms for something, anything, that can point them in the right direction. They start in the back with the bedroom where the victim, well, parts of the victim, was found and working their way back to the front. It's one of those nice high rise apartments for rich people with their properly walled rooms, quite unlike the box shaped, single room hovels most New Yorkers are used to. The appliances are state of the art and obviously expensive, but they look a bit worse for wear. The furniture is fashionable and trendy in that way “new money” like because they think it shows they have “culture” or something. There’s a liquor cabinet in the living room, fully stocked with brand names even Newt raises an eyebrow at, their seals cracked and bottles half full at most, the obvious pride and joy besides the bookshelf teaming with so many books they’ve bled over onto the purely decorative (re: useless) mantel piece like a paperbound disease.

"It's so cold in here," Queenie says into the silence, rubbing her hands over her goose pimpled arms.

"Well, it is winter.” Tina struggles to fit the book she had been looking at back on the shelf with mixed success.

“Absurdly so, considering he has a furnace in here. It appears to be on, but the metal is ice cold,” Newt says, his fingers skimming over the dial. “A night like this? It should be warmer than Hogwart’s kitchens in here. It’s like whatever was here sucked the warmth out of the very air.”

Credence perks up at that. “Hogwarts?”

“The greatest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world.”

Tina and Queenie share a look and a skeptical snort.

“Hogwarts? More like hogwash. I think you mean Ilvermorny,” Queenie says, her dimples deep craters in her cheeks.

“The American magic school,” Tina clarifies for Credence’s benefit.

Jacob doesn’t even need the bond to be able to tell how annoyed Newt is over that. Hogwarts has always been a bit of a tumultuous double edged sword for Newt, as far as Jacob can tell from what Newt’s confided in him and how he feels whenever the school is brought up. It’s a tangled web. There’s the pride in his school, the happiness of learning new things and being taught under a wizard named Professor Dumbledore. But there’s also the anger at how he was treated and the loss over his friendship with Leta, the only friend he’d really had at the time and the woman he’d loved for some years. It’s a feeling Jacob understands, not through personal experience, but through Newt’s stumbling words and ducking gaze and the crushing disappointment and bitterness that Newt can’t keep out of his voice whenever he talks about his time there.

So, for the sake of saving them all a little pain, he says, stupidly, "Maybe the furnace is broken?"

Newt pauses, a grateful brush flitting along his skin like the wisp of and exhale, before he pastes on a doubtful face. “I don’t think that’s it, not necessarily.”

"So it causes a drop in temperature and then eats you?"

"Could be a pogrebin." 

"A what?"

“It’s a fiendish creature that lulls muggles, usually, into a sense of miserable senselessness. And when they’ve given up, the pogrebin devours them,” Newt says almost conversationally in his scientific voice, the one he pulls out when he’s explaining one of the many things he’s knowledgeable about, and not at all like he’s talking about a human eating demon. God, blunt and straightforward to the core, and still the most beautiful thing Jacob’s ever seen. “They aren’t typically associated with temperature shifts, however.”

Credence cringes. "Sounds awful."

"You're telling me," Jacob mutters, poking his head through a doorway splitting off from the living room. Someone pretty important must have lived here, a politician maybe.

Or, Jacob thinks, a journalist or investigator of some sort. Newspaper clippings spread out in organized chaos on one of the walls, all of them focused on the “peculiar gas explosions plaguing the city.” Most of them have been snipped from _Shaw News_ , the font bold and oozing pretension. A typewriter takes pride of place in the center of the vast desk towards the back of the room. There’s a little table poised in one corner, its surface cluttered with a stick phone and papers stacked into a precariously high tower. Jacob paws through the stack, taking care not to upset the already faulty structure. Halfway through, he finds a Second Salemer flier tucked away, almost covertly, a secret. He smooths a few fingers along the line of his moustache and moves to search through the desk drawers next.

"I've never heard of one being in the Americas though,” he hears Tina say. “I thought they were native to Russia."

“They are, but like non-magical beasts, they can stow away on boats, or someone will make the effort of transporting them elsewhere and they’ll escape.”

The drawers yield nothing in the way of magical evidence, none that Jacob can find anyway with whatever trivial ability he possesses, instead revealing more liquor, several sheaves of paper for the typewriter, ink, and a series of black and white photographs depicting a reserved man and two young boys, the glass frames cracked and taped over.

“Hmm.” Jacob picks up one of the pictures, this one showing one of the young boys, sullen and miserable looking in his trousers and suspenders, glass tinkling as it clatters onto the floor. A shiver prickles up his spine, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as the cold hanging in the air seems to deepen, go frigid and tense. An uneasy thrum settles in his gut. “Hey, guys?”

But no one answers. Distantly, he can hear the noise of Tina and Newt arguing in the other room, but it’s tiny and faint and fragmented, a telephone connection breaking. And that makes no sense, they’re only in the room next door—

He takes a deep, fortifying breath, his exhalation misting out in front of him, and glances up. At first, he doesn’t see anything. Nothing jumps out, nothing appears to be wrong or moved or different. The only light in this windowless room is spilling in through the open doorway.

And then it does.

The shadows on the floor darken and flicker ominously in the corners of the room, and he blinks rapidly and takes a step back because maybe it’s just him? But it’s not, it can’t be, he knows that it’s not. The darkness is spreading, creeping closer as the dim light from the living room grows more and more distant, until it is only a small pinprick that is suddenly extinguished, taking with it the last gasps of noise.

There is only darkness.

The picture slips from his unresponsive fingers to shatter on the floor.

“Hello!” He tries to shout, but the sound is sucked right out of the air before it has the chance to escape his mouth. All he can hear is static and the drumming of his pulse in his throat, in his ears.

 _Help me_ , a voice whispers, high and hollow and far away.

He freezes, straining his hearing for something, anything, but there’s no sound at all. No visible movement.

Nothing.

Desperately, he prods at Newt through the bond, but he can't feel the bond at all, there’s nothing there, only an aching hollow space where is used to be. It’s gone, oh god, it’s gone—

And he backs up into something solid, hopefully the wall, but it isn’t very supportive, his knees shaking and weak beneath him. He can’t do this, everything hurts, but it also doesn’t, what’s going on, what’s happening, he can’t—

 _Help me_ , the voice says again, closer now.

—feel anything, his body's numb and broken and cold, so cold, he just wants to lie down, to sleep and never wake up, why would he want to wake up—

 _Feed me_ , an icy gasp in his ear.

And everything goes dark.

 

****

 

Jacob opens his eyes.

Everything is blurry, but it doesn’t take long for him to recognize Newt hunched over him by the ginger smudge of his hair, the haze of his dark waistcoat, the case sitting inconspicuously at his side. He’s laid out on the ground, his head is pounding and he feels like he's run for miles without stopping, drained, everything tender and stinging down to the muscle. There’s a chill to his skin that can’t be natural—even his bones feel frozen solid and seconds away from shattering—but there’s a warmth there too, a comforting weight wrapped around his torso, slowly chasing it away.

He’s alive. That’s good.

He blinks until the fog is gone from his vision.

"Jacob," Newt whispers roughly, and Jacob has to breathe deep around the bursting swell of Newt’s relief expanding behind his ribs even as he desperately clings to it, his own relief so palpable he’s practically choking on it. It had been gone, the bond lost to him, an empty space carved out in his chest where it used to be, except it wasn’t like that, right? Magic can do a great deal of things, but all of their research said a bond like this, so archaic and traditional and _strong_ , couldn’t be so easily removed. But surely illusions of such magnitude and scale aren’t difficult if the caster has the power to use it? It had felt like it was though, that it was gone, and that terrifies him, how easily he broke and gave up without it.

God, Newt really is his Achilles’ heel, now more than ever.

He’s his greatest strength too, of course, and isn’t that one of the most ironic and sentimental thoughts he’s ever had. God. He gets so sappy after near death experiences…

“Merlin’s beard, never do that to me again,” There’s an edge to his voice, and he’s rigid and Jacob can see him visibly pulling himself together into something reserved and restrained. Jacob should be worried, probably, but he’s got one of Jacob’s hands clamped in both of his, his bitten fingernails digging crescents into Jacob’s pulse point, and that says more than enough. From beneath the line of his waistcoat, Pickett has poked his head out, chirping irritably in agreement. So much for leaving him in the case.

Jacob rubs his thumb over as much of that scarred skin that he can reach, an instinctive swish swish that must be drilled into all of humanity, and asks, "What happened?"

There’s a clatter and footsteps, and there’s Queenie, bright and shaken, sinking to her knees on his other side. “We didn’t know anything was wrong at first.” She doesn’t touch him, not without glancing at Newt first, and then it’s only a gentle hand on his arm as she’s done a few times with Credence. “But then the door slammed shut. I couldn’t hear you anymore, honey.”

“We had to blast our way through,” Tina says, and there she is, across the room, the living room, he’s not in the office anymore, her rigid back turned away from them as she looks out the window by the useless mantel piece (there’s not even a fireplace for it to frame, for Christ’s sake, not that there could be a fireplace with six floors above them. Money can do some things, but not that). Jacob makes a move to sit up, and Newt and Queenie help him do so. Newt’s coat slides off his chest to puddle in his lap.

There’s a giant, gaping hole in the wall where the door used to be, the jagged edges smoking still, the paper insulation peeling through the crevices. Whatever spell they used to get through to him obliterated even the mere suggestion of the door’s existence. The room inside is almost laughably clear and untouched compared to the wall, and Credence is inside, looking at the newspaper clippings, his face pale and drawn and highlighted by the orb floating in the middle of the room, a dark, writhing shape inside that could only have been Jacob’s magical assailant.

"It was a lethifold," Newt says abruptly, his grip tightening on Jacob with such force, he can feel the bones in his wrist grind together.

“Lethifold?” Jacob asks, his eyes never leaving the beast, because he hasn’t heard of _that_ before, and he’s certainly never experienced anything like what just happened either.

“There’s not a lot known about them, but many believe it's related to the dementor, the scary grim reaper thing, you called it, if you remember,” from the corner of his eye, he can see the flimsy twist of Newt’s mouth before it collapses back into a failed line, “except lethifolds consume human flesh instead of life energy."

"Oh.”

"Yes.”

“So it was going to… eat me?”

A creaky noise escapes the taller man’s throat. “It gave it a good go, but we got to you in time.”

“Oh. Well… That’s good?”

Newt laughs, small and sudden and exasperated, and shakes his head. “Yes. Very good.”

There’s a lull, and then Queenie asks, “Could it be the creature responsible for all the magical damage around the city?”

“Unlikely. Lethifolds have little in the way of destructive tendencies. They’re much more silent and suffocating when it comes to their prey,” Newt says, his gaze heavy on Jacob, on the evidence that only further confirms his point. He pauses. “They’re also native to the tropics.”

“What’s this one doing so far up North?” Tina considers, her fingers picking at her chin.

“How do most magical beasts end up where they’re not supposed to?” Jacob asks, finally tearing his gaze from the lethifold and standing up with only a little help from Newt and Queenie. He’s still a bit weak and sore, but already his strength is returning and within seconds he can stand, more or less, under his own power. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t lean on Newt a little though, for “extra support.”

Obviously.

“But why would someone bring it up here? It’s not like erumpent horn or niffler fur, right?”

Newt nods. “The only thing a lethifold is good for is death, as far as people know. They haven’t been extensively observed in its natural habitat, let alone how one might go about existing in an urban place such as New York City… It may not be the reason for the gas explosions, but I’m thinking the two events are connected.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Considering the evidence, I’m saying it’s highly likely that you have an obscurus running rampant in the city, and that someone brought the lethifold along to throw your Aurors off the trail.”

Queenie gasps, but she isn’t looking at Newt. She’s blinking at Credence, whose made his way back into the living room at some point during the conversation, meek and shrunk in on himself.

“Oh, Credence—”

“What—no! What evidence?” Tina demands. “That can’t be. There hasn’t been an obscurus in America since that whole awful disaster in Salem.”

“Tina, just think. Unprecedented magical damage with no known pattern or magical signature to go off of, the ability to disappear without a trace— the fact that someone out there is going to great, dangerous lengths to hide it from you all.” He shakes the hand not supporting Jacob about, frustration bubbling under Jacob’s skin. “You know I’m right.”

Tina’s face contorts, conflicted, but a sudden crash somewhere outside of the apartment has her stumbling back from the window and stuttering, “Mercy Lewis, we have to get out of here. Now. Aurors were probably dispatched the second we blew up that wall—”

The door to the apartment swings open, a group of Aurors headed by a man with gray streaked hair standing at the ready.

“Not so fast, Miss Goldstein,” the man says, his eyes sliding, slippery slick, around the room at them before landing on the floating orb in the study. “Yes, I do believe we have a problem here.”

“Mr. Graves!”

His gaze falls to rest on Newt and instinctively, Jacob moves to stand just in front of him. “I’m guessing this is the unregistered wizard with the case full of violent, magical beasts? And a no-maj? My, you’ve been busy.”

“They’re harmless,” Newt says defensively. Jacob’s hackles rise the longer Graves looks at them, something condescending and calculating just underneath his placid expression.

“We’ll be the judge of that.” And Newt’s case flies from the floor into the man’s grip without a word spoken.

“Wait!”

“You can’t do this!”

“But Mr. Graves—”

“Take them to Madam President.” Graves’ gaze passes over them again, pausing a split second longer on Credence. Credence, whose face has gone white as a sheet. It sends a shiver down Jacob’s spine, makes him want to hide the teen away from this Mr. Graves. A look like that though begs the question: Do they know each other? And if they do, how? “All of them.”

 

****

 

The trial, because no other name can so accurately describe their meeting before Madam President Picquery and her advisors, goes about as well as expected.

So, it was a disaster.

Predictable.

Between the accusing questions thrown around by the advisors and Tina’s wavering explanation (wherein she, surprisingly, argued in Newt and his favor) and Newt’s blunt assessment of an obscurial inhabitance in New York City, it didn’t take long for the Madam President to come to a decision on what to do with them, her headdress tinkling delicately with the regal tilt of her head.

“Strip them of their wands and put them in a cell until we know the extent of their crimes. Mr. Graves?”

“Yes, Madam President?” He asked from her right hand. He must be a pretty important figure, Jacob had thought, if he got to stand there.

“Launch a full investigation of the contents of Mr. Scamander’s case. Use any means necessary,” she said, rising gracefully from her seat. Her advisors stood with her.

Newt’s devastated pleas in response still rings sad and stinging in Jacob’s head. He grips Newt’s hand in his own, rubbing his thumb around the raw, blistered skin at his wrist where the enchanted ropes binding his hands had been, over the white scars standing out stark against the red. Newt’s struggling as they were dragged away from Madam President’s office certainly hadn’t helped matters.

A look around the cold space of their holding cell shows a mix of downtrodden faces, the Goldstein sisters’ brows furrowed in the same look of contemplative defiance, a contrast to the broken line of Credence’s shoulders.

Jacob clears his throat. “Well, this is a pretty shitty situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

Beside him, Newt snorts bitterly, his shoulders hunching up to his ears. He runs his free hand through his fringe, pulls at his collar. “Well put, Jacob, darling. Really.”

“Well, we are. It’s not like this is the worst place we’ve been in though.”

“What could be worse than our home being invaded by reckless assailants with both of us unable to stop them?” Newt asks mildly, but Jacob knows it’s more that he wants to be reminded, to be convinced otherwise, because right now, right here, things are certainly looking bleak and awful, with no end in sight.

“There was that time in Scotland, you remember? When that evil woman was going to flay you one layer of skin at a time?” Jacob ignores the varying gasps and looks of horror directed their way and continues, “Sweden was basically a disaster from the beginning, before we even stepped off that magical trolley thing. All those carnivorous vines? You remember _that_ , right? I’ve never felt such fear because of a plant before.”

Newt hums, dubious.

“Or when we were in the Australian Outback and we almost got bit by that giant, venomous, completely non-magical spider?”

“It was, without a doubt, a magical creature,” Newt says automatically, the mock argument well-worn and familiar. “Nothing that large with that many fangs can possibly not be magical in nature.”

“Oh, and what about the time we nearly froze to death in Siberia? Hypothermia is no laughing matter.” At Credence’s confused look, Jacob wiggles the fingers of his unoccupied hand. “We lost a couple fingers between us, but apparently missing limbs aren’t a permanent thing if you have the right kind of magic.”

Their three companions cringe, which only serves to further make Jacob’s point. “Our home may be in the hands of the American magical government, but at least we still have all our limbs. And if anyone can hold their own against foreign invaders, our creatures can. They’re clever like that, as you’re well aware,” he says, taking Newt’s hand in both of his and tugging gently at his long, calloused fingers until Newt finally looks at him with those lovely green eyes of his. Whole galaxies reside in those eyes. “Besides, considering our vast experience in unpleasant disasters, everything will work out eventually. Probably.”

“Alright, alright.” Newt shakes his head and sags to fit better against his side with a wry smile and a little prod through the bond that Jacob happily returns. Newt squeezes his hand. God, but Jacob loves him. He wouldn’t want to be stuck in a situation, any situation really, like this with anyone else.

“I’m so sorry,” Tina bursts, and Jacob hates to admit it, but he jumps, but only a little bit, damn it. He just forgets other people exist beyond him and Newt, sometimes. Have they been here this whole time? God, how embarrassing.

“What for?”

“For—for being so awful to you both, at the start, for not being more cautious with the lethifold, and for landing us in this situation to begin with.”

Jacob catches Newt’s eye for a moment, and they shrug as one.

“It is what it is.”

Tina’s eyes widen. “Just that easy?” She asks doubtfully.

“Yep,” Jacob says.

She glances at Queenie, who dimples encouragingly, and her shoulders slump. She offers a small, sincere smile, which Jacob returns. “Okay.”

“While this is all very touching, I’m afraid I’m going to have to break it up.”

Jacob startles, his heart throbbing from the rush of adrenaline as they all turn to the cell door to find Mr. Graves watching them with a raised eyebrow, two Aurors waiting off to the side. His dark eyes slide oil slick and slow over each of them, his gaze not pausing over Credence this time. The hair on the back of Jacob’s neck stands on end anyway.

“You two,” Mr. Graves says, pinning his stare onto Newt and then Tina, “come with me.”

“No,” Queenie says, stepping forward, her arm outstretched as if to keep Tina behind her. It trembles the littlest bit. She must know something they don’t, something only Mr. Graves’ or the other Aurors’ minds could have told her. Jacob puts himself slightly ahead of Newt, just in case. “No, you’re not allowed to take them.”

“I’m afraid you’re not the one in charge here, Miss Goldstein.”

“Wherever you’re taking them isn’t good.”

“It’s none of your concern. Now, they either come with me willingly, or we take them by force.” Behind him, the Aurors draw their wands in what’s probably supposed to be a threatening manner.

It’s quiet for a moment, a standoff, before Tina gently takes Queenie’s hand and pets it, murmuring something quiet that Jacob doesn’t catch but which makes Queenie’s expression fracture into something scared. Whatever else she says is lost to him as Newt grabs him by the back of the neck to press their foreheads together, his face hard and resolved.

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure something out,” Newt whispers to him, overwhelming him with the emotions he’s pushing along the bond. Fear, concern, determination, and that fierce, burning affection that always runs like an undercurrent to their every interaction. Jacob’s mouth thins, but he nods and watches, stiff and angry, as Tina and Newt make their way out of the cell to have their wrists bound again. Newt looks back over his shoulder only once to catch his eye before he disappears down the hall, their bond lengthening with every step.

“Wait—Mr. Graves, please,” Credence suddenly pleads as Graves makes to leave the cell, his shaking hand moving as if to grab the man by the arm, but instead winds up clenched in the front of his shirt. “They haven’t done anything wrong.”

And if his gaze hadn’t been disturbing before, it’s worse now: a bottomless pit filled with pity and something like irritation. “The words of a traitorous squib mean nothing to me.”

Credence’s face turns ashen. “What?”

“A squib—you’re as worthless as a no-maj, not a trace of magic in you. I have no further use for you. Return to your wretched mother where you belong,” he says, and with a flick of his wrist, the cell door closes resolutely behind him.

They’re left in stunned silence for only a few moments, the only sound being the click of Graves’ heels as he disappears too. _Click, click, click,_ gone.

A beat. Two.

Credence heaves a breath so stuttered and thick he almost chokes on it.

“Oh no, sweetheart, it’s okay.” Queenie’s voice is soft, but tight with concern, her hands fluttering along his arm without actually touching him, hesitant in a way she normally isn’t.

“But I thought—he said that he would help me, that I was a wizard and he’d help me if I helped him,” Credence grinds out, his hands clawing into the fabric of his shirt. He mutters something else, something distressed and raw, but Jacob’s more alarmed with how his edges have started wisping away, little dark tendrils floating away from him in a way scarily reminiscent of her, of the little girl he’d met in Sudan, the one who’d died because of the obscurus inside of her (because they failed her—she’d been depending on them and they failed her).

“Jesus.”

How could he not have known? Between Credence’s reaction to the obscurus in the suitcase to the fact that his own mother hated magic, thought it was the work of the Devil and should be eradicated (and oh, the flinching, the almost needy way he leaned into companionable contact— and Jacob thought himself a pretty smart, observational person when really he’s just so blind to the things right in front of his face), how did he not connect the pieces?

“Credence—Credence, you can control this—”

“I thought he was my friend!” Credence cries, curling in on himself so violently, Jacob’s afraid he might break his spine.

“Queenie—you need to back off. It’s not safe!”

“I won’t!” She doesn’t even spare Jacob a glance, her hands still hovering over the pulsing line of his back. “Credence, you’re not useless—fight it! You can do it!”

“I don’t think I can anymore, Miss Queenie,” he says, miserable and overwhelmed. And Jacob lunges for Queenie, gathering her away as quickly as he can in what limited space they have, just in time for the obscurus to rip free from Credence’s trembling form.

“Credence!” Queenie screams.

But he’s gone, consumed within the writhing mass of chaotic magic as it tears through the cell wall and out into the bowels of the cell block they’re in, hissing and snarling and searching for a way out.

The lights that didn’t explode from the wave of magic the obscurus released flicker in accompaniment to the fading sounds of destruction.

Then, silence.

“Well, that’s just great.”

“There must be something we can do,” Queenie says, her fingers digging bruises into his forearm. She’s got cement dust and debris in the wind swept curls of her hair, gray smudged along the apple of one of her cheeks. The awful lighting casts strange shadows across her face, makes her look hollow-eyed and dead, a living corpse, like the soldiers he fought alongside in the trenches.

“There’s nothing we can do right now except try to find a way out,” He says and clears his throat around the little lump that’s taken up residence there as takes stock of himself. Nothing too bad; he’s none the worse for wear. Well, besides looking like a dusty ghost and feeling the vague urge to sneeze. His coat is in serious need for a washing, but his waistcoat is probably fine. He pats at his thigh, watches the billow of debris that poofs off with a small, resigned sigh. He really liked this pair of pants. Considering his line of work, he should know by now not to have attachments to any of his clothes, but he can’t help it. A nice pair of pants can be hard to come by.

“You’re thinking about your pants at a time like this?” Queenie asks incredulously.

Jacob shrugs and smiles, strained.

She blinks at him, her eyebrows furrowed, but she follows along easily enough when he starts navigating through the rubble. All that’s left of the cell is the warped remains of the iron door and a single wall, which looks seconds away from crumbling under some lucky draft. It’s not like the cell was all that big, but with chunks of wall and ceiling scattered haphazardly everywhere, it takes them a little time to pick their way out into the hall. It’s a miracle they weren’t hurt. Maybe Credence still had some shred of control, even enveloped the way he was in the obscurus. Maybe. Hmm. He lends a hand to help Queenie around some of the bigger debris, her heels not quite up to the challenge. A twisted ankle is the last thing they need at this point.

The bond’s been thrumming just under his skin since Newt left, anxious and distracted. There’s a good chance they didn’t take him and Tina too far… well, that’s entirely subjective. They’re undoubtedly still in the same building, though heavens know how absolutely enormous magical buildings can be. But there’s something sour seeping in now, tart and biting. It takes a moment for him to recognize—

He grunts. Distress and reckless determination tear through his gut, heavy and sharp and with enough force to send him keeling over for a second.

Queenie gasps. “Jacob?” Her hands close around his arm again.

Oh shit.

This sure is a mess. A huge fucking mess. One of the biggest messes they’ve ever been in. Down three people, two of them in immediate trouble and one of them is a poor boy they should have known to help from the start. The signs were there damn it. And then there’s him and Queenie, stuck in the destroyed bowels of a government agency that’s been out to get him before, who would gladly erase him from their existence given the chance probably.

Christ.

The lump in his throat seems to inflate and there’s a band wrapping tight around his lungs, squeezing. It’s getting a little difficult to breathe. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. There isn’t time for this. They can’t afford it. They need to get going, now. He closes his eyes, grounds his attention on Queenie’s grip on his arm and closes off the bond as much as he can without completely blocking it out until he can push through the discomfort. Okay okay, everything is okay. Well, no it’s not, but things could be worse?

Agh.

There’s no time to panic, to pick apart and analyze the whole emotional barrage Newt sent his way. Not only is Credence’s life hanging in the balance (and he’s so old for an obscurial; he must be so strong to have survived even this long), but Newt and Tina’s lives surely are too if whatever they’ve gotten into because of that Mr. Graves is as bad as it feels. He just needs to trust that Newt and Tina can handle themselves until they get there.

Shit.

“We have to find Newt and Tina,” Queenie says, her hands trembling. Something like understanding reflects in her face.

“Yeah.” He steels his nerves and they continue making their way through the rubble. And this was supposed to be such a simple, quick trip to America. Already, he can see their plans to travel to Belarus slipping away. With the way their luck tends to run, he should have known better even before he stepped foot in this city.

Nothing ever really goes as planned with them.

Nothing.

He’s got the stories and scars to prove it.

He’d just be grateful if they could all make it out of this alive and intact, at this point.

Together, Jacob and Queenie stumble their way through the wreckage of the cell block as quickly as they can, nearly tripping over their own feet and the odd block of cement as Jacob steers them in the direction the bond is frantically tugging him towards. The wild panic (Newt’s, his, what’s the difference anymore?) is already starting to fade, thank God. Hopefully, that means Newt and Tina are both okay. The urgency, though, has not let up at all, and he doesn’t know what that means. He ignores the sweat that breaks out along his forehead and neck from all the stress, cold and shivering. Queenie seems lost and stiff beside him, her eyes darting to and fro like maybe Credence or her sister and Newt may appear from around a column at any minute. Neither of them speak.

They finally have some luck and stumble upon an empty staircase several meters away from the huge, gaping hole in the ceiling the obscurus must have escaped through. Pausing just at the foot of the stairs, Jacob catches Queenie’s eye. Her mouth is a tense, anxious line but she shares his look of grim resolve as they work their way up, one landing at a time.

“Were we the only ones down here? I’m surprised no one’s come down to investigate,” Jacob mutters, grunting when he fumbles on a step. Queenie’s hold on his arm tightens as she tries to help steady him.

“More than likely. People don’t stay long in the holding cells. They usually get transferred to a wizarding prison or released,” Queenie says. “As for an investigation, judging from the direction of the hole, I’d say Credence caused quite the commotion in the lobby. They’ll be taking care of that first.”

“Lucky us.”

“Yeah.”

The stairs lead up to a deserted floor full of doors, the walls barren and dismal as the corridor seems to stretch off endlessly into the distance. Despite himself, Jacob whistles. It echoes eerily.

Queenie giggles, this small, fragile thing.

They run along the hallway as fast as their caution will let them, taking the occasional turn down a different, equally massive and empty hall. Only once do they run into someone, and the woman sprints by them without even a glance, her hair in disarray, several sheaves of paper in her arms with her heels pounding on the tile.

“That’s Miss Harper,” Queenie says as they watch her round a corner and vanish. “Credence got away, but he left a bit of a mess on his way out. Oh, poor thing.”

They make it only a little further before she grabs him, apologizing when she sees how badly she startled him. His focus tends to turn inward at times like this, when feeling the knotting tension of emotion is the only way for him to tell if Newt is okay, if he’s still alive. It is what it is. “Wait, hold on.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. What is it?”

“This is where they would keep your suitcase and our wands,” she says. To him, the door looks just as dull and nondescript as every single other door they’ve seen thus far. He squints at it. It doesn’t even have a plaque or a number or anything.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, sugar. I may not be a career girl like Teenie, but there ain’t much in this place that’s a secret to me.”

Queenie isn’t the best at wandless magic though, and the door is locked with some stupidly complex spell as it turns out, so after a couple failed attempts on her part, it falls to Jacob to figure out a way for them to get in. When kicking the door down doesn’t work, he tries the next best thing.

“Do you have a bobby pin?”

Queenie levels him with a distracted look of confused disbelief, as if he is insane for asking. “Of course,” she says, the _what kind of woman do you take me for?_ implied in her tone. He forces a small laugh and shakes his head, accepting the couple pins she hands him.

It’s times like this that he’s grateful that he ended up in the infantry he was assigned to during the war. Between the tenacious New Yorkers and the fierce Irishmen, he left basic training with more than the standard set of army skills. Lock picking just happens to be one of them.

He pulls out his ever reliable jack knife the Aurors so thoughtlessly left him with (apparently, with not a lick of magic in him, the muggle having a measly knife on his person wasn’t something they were all that worried about. What was the worst he could do against them? He doesn’t know if he should feel grateful for their prejudice or extremely insulted) and, with the help of a bent pin, pops the door open after a few minutes of messing with it.

“Oh, what a wonderful trick, darling.” Queenie claps softly.

“Thanks. I live to please.”

“Could you teach me?”

“Sure thing. As soon as we get out of this joint.” They share tiny half-smiles.

They collect the suitcase first. One of the clasps is bent out of shape, but the rest of it is still intact, that Jacob can tell. It doesn’t _feel_ off, anyway, the way he can sometimes tell when magic has changed something. The wands they find in a locked cupboard behind the desk taking center stage in the room, but that lock isn’t a match for Jacob’s knife and bobby pins either. The Magical Congress really should consider upgrading their security against things like this, honestly. Queenie twitters happily when she recovers hers, storing it away somewhere with her sister’s. He pockets Newt’s wand, the teeth marks dug into the wood wonderfully familiar against his fingers as he runs them over it, calming his nerves a little bit. It’s not the man himself, but there’s just something about the wand that screams Newt to the very fiber of his being. Considering a wand is sort of like an extension of the person who uses it, it’s probably not all that surprising.

“Alright, let’s go find—”

“What could possibly be behind this?” Queenie asks. A curtain flutters ominously near one of the walls. Just looking at it makes Jacob want to recoil and look away, but that sort of repelling magic is old hat to him these days, so it’s not hard to overcome it. The shake of his head and a few blinks does the trick. She glances uneasily at him. “There ain’t no windows in the offices at these levels…”

Using an umbrella he finds by the office door, he carefully draws it back and can’t help but curse, his surprise mirrored in Queenie’s gasp.

“Ah, shit.”

“Ain’t that—?”

“Yeah, an obscurus,” Jacob confirms, watching as the familiar black mass writhes inside its orb. It’s so peculiar. Jacob’s seen two obscurus now in his life time, and yet already he can tell there’s something so distinctly unique between this one and the one that tore free from Credence. Sure, the sizes are different: a little girl’s magic hasn’t grown to its full capacity compared to a teenager, repressed or not. Just looking at it though, in the slivers of green and silver (such a contrast to the burning oranges of Credence’s) fracturing through the black, he can see the hints of the beauty it could have been had it been nourished and allowed to bloom. A person’s magic is solely their own, a spark upon birth, tailored by their experiences, Newt once told him.

(“So you’re saying… you’re one of a kind? But I already knew that. I’ve known it since we first met.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I mean, a person like you, you’re really something else. I don’t think the world could take having another Newt running around, being all brilliant, you know?”

“…Merlin’s beard, Jacob. Don’t just say something like that.”)

It’s not nearly as erratic as Credence’s, he’d call it docile even, but that’s likely because it has no host. Repression is much like a disease, corrupting magic until it’s dark and vicious and straining to get free, at the host’s expense if necessary. Which is most recorded cases.

God, magic is such a terrifying thing.

“It’s the one Newt extracted from,” his voice stumbles. He clears his throat, “a little girl in Sudan.”

Queenie’s eyes, if possible, get even wider. “Oh.”

“I’m gonna need your help here, Queenie.”

“O-okay.”

“I’m going to open the case, and I need you to float it in as gently as possible.”

“I—”

“Hey,” he takes her hand and pets it until she tears her eyes from the orb to focus on him, “I can’t touch it, but we need to get it out of here. You’ve got this. You’re Queenie Goldstein, after all. You can do anything.”

She smiles, unsure but glowing, even if only dimly. “Oh, you charmer.”

“Mhm.”

“Okay.”

The experience of transferring the trapped obscurus into the case nearly takes a decade off Jacob’s life, but Queenie gets the job done with minimal hesitation and very steady hands (almost as steady as his). He closes the only working clasp with a sigh of relief, returning Queenie’s triumphant grin with one of his own.

“Alright then, let’s go.” And they’re off again. Corridors fall away behind them as they move onward, taking another staircase up here and through a doorway there, Jacob following the pull of his tether, until they’re out of the underbelly of the building and into something that resembles those parking garage things where people can store their infernal driving monstrosities. It’s vast and open with arching columns every couple feet. The further they go, the more people they start running into, alarms blaring as witches and wizards alike stream by with frenetic energy and loud shouting.

“Just pretend like we know where we’re going,” Queenie says under her breath, taking a second to covertly brush the both of them off before grabbing the suitcase from his grasp and strutting forward with more of a purpose. Jacob only stumbles a little at this. He nervously tugs at his cuffs.

“But we do know where we’re going. Sort of.”

And they’re so close. Jacob can feel it in his blood, in his bones, in the way the bond is tightening, tightening, tightening, rapidly shortening, a rubber band whipping back after being stretched out of shape—

“Jacob!”

And oh, there he is. He’s never seen anything so whole and beautiful and undamaged in his entire life, he thinks as he practically throws himself that last little bit of distance between them, the two of them colliding so hard he swears he hears something like thunder under the roaring in his ears. Almost immediately, whatever residual tension along their tether dissolves as they melt into each other, concern and assurance bouncing back and forth between them until all that’s left is relief.

“How—?” Jacob buries his face into the collar of Newt’s coat and breathes him in, all familiar sweat and earth.

“Pickett and Lucinda,” Newt answers breathlessly, his hand gripping Jacob’s wrist so fiercely he can feel the taller man’s heart pounding a harmonious, answering beat to his own through their skins. Pickett pokes his head out of Newt’s lapel, trilling something triumphant and proud. Jacob laughs.

“Whose Lucinda?” He hears Queenie ask distantly, as if she is saying it through water, and maybe she is because Jacob feels an awful lot like he’s drowning. It may not have been long, but God he’s missed this man.

“Swooping evil,” Tina says.

“Oh?”

“Where’s Credence?” Tina asks. At that, the spell is broken and he finally pulls away, though not too far, grimacing.

“About that…” Jacob trails off. Newt raises an eyebrow. He sort of wants to rub his fingers over it, but he restrains himself. Barely. And only because Newt is smirking at his expense. But whatever, like he’s any better with the way he hasn’t let go of his wrist.

“Explain it to them on the way,” Queenie cuts in, handing Tina her wand. Her face is screwed up in determination. “Get in the case. I’ll get us out of here.”

 

****

 

“We have to help him,” Tina says, her mouth a puckered line. Beside her, Queenie nods, having joined them in the case after getting them to safety. “I failed in helping him once. I’d prefer not to do that again.”

“Of course,” Newt says around the wand he’s got clamped between his teeth. He’s struggling to carry an old crate of magical odds and ends from his workshop, but he waves Tina away when she tries to help. Jacob shrugs at her dead pan look, his own box of potions and ingredients clacking together. He’s pretty sure he knows what Newt’s plans are, he can’t think of anything else the magizoologist could be doing, but he still gives Newt time to pull himself together. He’ll tell the girls in due time. They’ll need their help, after all.

They dump the boxes on Newt’s “outdoor” worktable near the rock outcrop where Frank is bristling, his feathers fluffed out and agitated (and wasn’t that just a treat for the two Ilvermorny girls, to meet one of last remaining thunderbirds in the flesh and not as just some house symbol). He’d flown down from the clouded “sky” in the middle of Jacob explaining what happened to Credence, having sensed the danger and wanting to warn them, and he hasn’t left since, staring intently at them with his intelligent, gold eyes. It’s honestly a little creepy, and positively nerve-wracking, but Jacob keeps that to himself. Frank can probably sense anxiety too. He wouldn’t put it passed the mythical bird.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” Newt says as he rummages through the crates. He fishes out a few baubles and vials, puts them aside, muttering to himself as he goes. “No, that’s not it. No. Where is it? I guess I could always make some more, but that would take too much time—” Humming triumphantly, he extracts an opaque vial of something shining and ivory.

“What’s that?” Tina asks.

“This,” Newt flourishes the vial about, “is a very special concoction I developed during our stay in Sudan. When ingested, the user’s magical levels are near fatally drained.”

At the girls’ twin looks of horror, Jacob jumps in. “Nearly, being the key word here.”

“Ah, yes. It’s not the most comfortable experience, but wizards can, in fact, survive with their magic depleted for a short period of time, and should that person be an obscurial, for example, the tainted magic is therefore removed.” From there, as Newt explains, it’s all a matter of magical transfusion. The patient is given enough to survive while their depleted stores regenerate, and then some. With enough untainted magic paving the way, and as long as the person no longer represses their magic, then it’s all a matter of the foreign magic acclimatizing to the patient until its more recognizably their own.

Jacob strokes his moustache. “It’s pretty useful against curses that attack an individual’s magic as well, we’ve found.”

“But there are two problems with magical transfusion,” Newt says. “It’s not easy transferring magic, pure magic, from one person to another. More than anything, the person performing the procedure needs to be able to act as a conduit, to just let the magic flow through them, and some people just aren’t good at that. And there’s also the fact that magic is solely unique to each individual.”

“Which means transferring magic from one user to another could be… problematic?” Queenie reasons.

“That’s it precisely. Compatibility is key.” Newt pockets the vial, catching Jacob’s gaze, his expression somber. Jacob offers him a tense smile, the shared weight of their sadness and guilt pressing around his lungs. “The little girl— we made the mistake of assuming that blood relation automatically equaled compatibility because of studies I’d read in the past. But we were wrong.”

“By the time we figured out how magical compatibility worked and then found someone who _was_ compatible, it was too late. The obscurus had regenerated, more deadly than ever, and it tore her apart.”

It’s been three months, almost four now, Christ, but just thinking about it still stings and burns, a gaping maw, a wound healing slow and ugly for being left to fester untreated so long (and even with a bond to help ease the way, they’d both been guilty of keeping the pain, the guilt they felt, from the other when they should have been facing it together right from the beginning. Even now, they’re still stumbling into the raw edges of it, but at least now they have each other to muddle through. It doesn’t fix their problems, but it makes facing them a little easier).

What if, what if, what if. But that’s not a healthy way to live, and how were they to know? (But they _should_ have, they should have known.)

(Just like they should have known with Credence.)

Jacob shakes his head.

“So, what, we’re just going to hope Credence gets control back long enough to take the potion, and then hope we find someone compatible in time? That seems rather cruel.” Tina frowns.

“That’s not what they’re going to do at all, right boys?” Queenie asks, a small, hopeful smile pulling at her lips.

“No, no, of course not. I’m hoping, considering how strong he appears to be, having reached the age he has, that with our help, he will be able to reign the obscurus back in. Heavy, volatile emotion seems to be a trigger for the obscurus, so I thought he could stay here, with us, until we find someone compatible with him.” Newt gestures vaguely. “Keep things low-stress, keep him content. Compatibility is difficult to find, but it’s not impossible. Should only take us a couple days, if the Magical Congress proves to be an ally in this.”

Tina raises an eyebrow skeptically. “You think keeping him in here will be low-stress?” As if to prove her point, Arnold’s petulant bellows resound from nearby. A trace of sulfur still lingers in the air. The nundu likely hadn’t taken kindly to intruders wandering about his territory. They’re lucky he’s been putting up with Tina and Queenie, honestly.

(While a cursory glance around the biomes revealed no immediate damage or dead bodies (just a lot of similarly, understandably agitated beasts), once this whole… situation has been resolved, they’ll need to go around properly, make sure everyone and everything is alright.

Who knows what Graves did trying to get the obscurus out of here.)

Queenie throws him a wide-eyed look as Newt and Tina bicker back and forth, and he shrugs. What? It’s not like they would have brought the girls in if it was fatally dangerous. Newt and him might be odd, in their own ways, but they’re not intentionally cruel or homicidal.

“He seemed to enjoy himself when he was here last,” Newt says defensively. “Where else would he stay? Locked up in the Congress building somewhere? In the cellar?”

“No, he can stay with us!”

“What an awful idea—”

“What a marvelous idea, Teenie,” Queenie interrupts with a pointed look of glee at Newt. “We would love to have him over again.”

“And you think the Magical Congress is just going to let you house him in an apartment? At least here, we have the argument that any damage incurred, _which there shouldn’t be_ , I wouldn’t let that happen, but if there was, it wouldn’t affect the city.”

“I’ll handle that,” Tina says firmly. Her hands are clenched at her sides.

Jacob steps up beside Newt when it feels like he may try to continue arguing and brushes his fingers over the cuff of his coat, the warmth of his skin making his own tingle. After a moment, Newt folds with a grumble and a fizzling of annoyance in Jacob’s chest. Jacob covers a smirk behind his hand, but he doesn’t miss the wink Queenie sends his way. “Newt handled the original transference in Sudan pretty successfully, the magic being rejected notwithstanding, so once we’ve found someone compatible and caught them up, and if they’re willing, of course, then we’re set.”

“Glad we’re all in agreement, then.”

Suddenly, in a flurry of thunder and wind, Frank ascends into the sky with an ear-piercing screech.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Something’s happened. Something very bad,” Newt says, eyes wide, his jaw a rigid line. Alarm curls cold and bleak around his bones, a resounding echo to his own.

“It has to be Credence.”

“How long has it been since he escaped the containment?”

“About an hour?”

“Graves and his men would have been sent after him the second he escaped the Congress building,” Tina says.

“We have to hurry.”

They rush to get out of the case, Jacob watching as his three companions stumble up the ladder with varying degrees of grace. Right as he’s about to join them though, he spots something through the open door way to their bedroom, resting half-hidden on his side-table under a sheaf of baking recipes, and he pauses. It gleams at him. He hesitates, guilt and trepidation and a stubborn peel of determination warring in his gut.

“Come on, Jacob!” Tina calls through the hatch.

He starts to climb up the ladder.

Oh, but what the hell, what’s he got to lose, and goes to carefully grab the object, slipping it into the back of his waistband.

“Everything alright?” Newt asks when he’s joined them on the roof of some building Queenie had finally taken them to to keep them safe and out of sight.

“Yeah, yeah. No worries.” Newt doesn’t believe him, had surely felt everything he had, but he lets it go for now, squeezing his hand in one of his own, the case held securely in his other.

Jacob looks out along the New York City skyline. Buildings rise up, jagged fingers reaching up into the starry sky, and it’s quiet, almost magically so. He can’t even hear any insects or birds despite the early hour of the morning. The muffled calm before the storm, an unnatural silence.

It shouldn’t be long now before the sun rises.

“Where could he be?” Even their voices ring low and odd in the still air like they’re talking into a vacuum.

“I don’t know—”

Queenie’s head whips around and she shouts “There!” just as a writhing mass materializes into existence and bursts through a building across the way. It shoots up into the air, exploding violently outward in a way that has Jacob and Newt instinctively flinching back a half step—and shit, shit, did the kid just literally explode or—but the obscurus compresses back into a bulbous, hulking mass and shoots through another building and another, moving further into the heart of the city, the sound of light bulbs popping and tearing metal and screaming concrete following in its wake.

And with that, whatever magic had been hovering over the city is broken, the strange hollow silence punched through with the wailing of sirens and people and breaking building materials.

“I don’t see Mr. Graves,” Tina says, her eyes flicking back and forth as she searches the cityscape for the man.

“He must be pursuing on the ground.”

“Alright.” Newt turns to him, his eyes burning and determined and fierce in spite of the tremors Jacob can see overtaking his hands. And Jacob knew this was going to happen. This is what Newt does. He’s the unsuspecting, unrecognizable younger brother to a famous British war-hero, the disappointing son to a powerful pureblood wizarding family, but damn it all, he’s the unsung hero, the one who shoulders responsibilities that don’t belong to him because if he’s of sound mind and descent health, then he’s going to help those who need him, whoever they are. But that’s just who he is, that’s the man Jacob fell in love with out in the French wilds as a war raged on around them, and it’s certainly a quality the both of them share.

For better or for worse.

“Stay here with the case. If anything happens—”

“It won’t,” Jacob says and takes the case in one steady hand. “Good luck. Just… be careful.” Newt grabs him by the face, easily tucking his thumbs into the hinges of his jaw like they’re made to fit him (and they are, _they are_ ), and ducks down to kiss him soundly, their bond thrumming heavy and loaded with all the things they aren’t saying between them. Jacob fits his fingers into the edge of Newt’s waistcoat and clings, drags him closer for one second, just one more second.

And then he’s gone, and Jacob watches him apparate the distance between buildings before disappearing somewhere entirely, the bond unspooling rapidly as he goes.

“I’m going too,” Tina says almost immediately, every line of her trembling with fear and energy, and he watches bitterly as she too vanishes, like an eraser blotting her out of existence.

He hates this, how he’s lacking that most quintessential component, that magic, to join in this fight. It’s an insurmountable obstacle, one he falls woefully short against. He always feels so useless in situations like these. Sure, he can punch things, and he has a mean right hook, if he may say so himself, but he can’t punch something that’s moving faster than the blink of an eye, can’t punch an obscurus, and he definitely can’t go up against a wizard like Graves one on one, not without some kind of distraction or something. But there’s no way in hell he can just stand by and watch, there must be something—

That’s it.

“Wait—take me with you, please,” Jacob pleads when Queenie makes to follow the others too.

“But Jacob—I’m sorry, but you’re just a no-maj. You ain’t like any I’ve met before, but it’s too dangerous.” But Queenie looks conflicted, so Jacob thinks out his plan. If he can’t actually fight, he can definitely do something as a distraction, one that will hopefully give the others the edge they need to win.

The object he grabbed from the case is a heavy weight at his back. Her eyes widen, her face gone white and stricken, but she nods and takes his hand in hers. “Are you sure, honey?”

“Let’s go.”

Queenie apparates them as close as she dares to the devastation the obscurus is wrecking, keeping them several blocks away, out of the way, but still on the trail. They pass by a police blockade and several groups of muggles, dust covered and scared, though none of them seem to know what’s going on. It must be the Aurors, Jacob thinks. There must be some kind of protocol for situations similar to this, to mass magical damage on this large a scale, and with the obscurus slamming through the Magical Congress building itself, they must have had time to start putting things in place even as they regrouped from that initial attack. They’ve come across a few of the brown coats running about, light specks in the murky darkness of the night, keeping the situation fairly contained as far as Jacob can tell: blurry barrier and illusion spells keep cropping up and getting in the way of them chasing after the obscurus, but hopefully that means it’s keeping the muggles out of the way and oblivious to what’s really happening.

They also, by happenstance, catch a glimpse of Graves as he vanishes from sight around a corner, his face sharp and twisted, his long coat flapping in the wind. But there’s no sign of Newt besides the fluctuation of the bond changing as the distance between them shortens and lengthens rapidly to accommodate whatever apparition Newt is doing, of emotion—adrenaline, fear, anxiety, a stubborn, insistent determination, protectiveness—and the occasional spasm of discomfort Jacob gets from Newt getting hurt, a scrape here, a bruise there. There’s no sign of Tina either. Queenie’s mouth flattens more and more the longer they go without any sign of her.

Eventually, they wind up outside the entrance to the subway station, the metal exterior of the overhang obviously warped and twisted from the obscurus’s violent entry. They’d watched as Graves had entered here not too long ago, and judging by the tugging in his sternum, Jacob would guess Newt is down there already too. But God, he hates rapid transit. Jacob takes a couple deep breaths—it wouldn’t be good to go in nauseated from all the apparition—and shrugs in a _what can you do_ kind of way at Queenie’s apologetic look.

They make their way down into the gutted, destroyed remains of the terminal and loading dock, just in time for a train to go blaring past. Jacob stares after it, rubbing his thumb where the bond is shifting disconcertingly (for Newt to be apparating so much, what could that mean?), and shakes his head, hopping down onto the tracks. He offers a hand to help Queenie down.

"Agh, subways. Why's it always got to be fucking subways?" he mutters as they make their way warily forward. The giggle that escapes Queenie is high and thin and just barely heard over the noise of devastation echoing eerily through the dimly lit tunnel, fading out into a silence not unlike the one that had befallen upon the city just moments before the obscurus had begun destroying everything.

Jacob stumbles.

Pain, he’s noticed over time, doesn't transfer along the bond the same way that emotions do. Emotion feels more immediate, filters more clearly along the tether that binds them together. It can be hard, sometimes, to untangle the web, to differentiate one emotion from another, but that just takes practice on both ends. Of which they have in spades.

But pain… They don't really feel each other's pain so much as they feel that the other is _in_ pain. The muddled feeling of discomfort at the site of whatever hurts them, it can almost be worse than what happens when one of them suffers from some great emotional upheaval, likely because with that discomfort, there can be emotions that come slamming in, uncontrollable and torrential and blurred to the point of unrecognizability.

The barrage of agony that bleeds over him makes the breath rattle in his lungs, makes his heart pound and his chest ache and feel tight, so tight he almost thinks his skin is splitting apart, flaying from his bones. The feeling splinters off, branching up and around his chest, up and down his arms, his muscles spasming under the stress, and he’s quick to dig fingers there to try and sooth it, even just a little bit, damn it, with little success. Closing the bond on his end helps with blocking against the sympathetic pain flaring along his skin but it also serves to stress him out further—what if something happens, what if Newt _dies_ , and he doesn’t feel it—so he leaves open it at half-mast, gaping and open and raw, so painful but not as debilitating, still a line to Newt, so very responsive and reassuring that Newt is _alive. He’s still alive_.

For now.

So he breathes deep around the noose wrapped around his throat, around the twisted bands of pain Newt is surely feeling—worse than almost any Jacob’s felt from him before—lest he get caught up and lost in the rush of sensation again.

Fuck, alright.

It’s distracting, but he’s had to work with less. He can do this.

“Maybe we should stop here?” Queenie’s face is washed out, sweat beading along her hairline.

“No—Newt needs help. I’m not going to let him die down here.” And he’s not. He won’t. Every fiber of his being _rebels_ at just the thought of it. Newt can’t die. Not like this. Not now. Maybe it would have been easier if they hadn’t met, if they’d met later in life, if they hadn’t fallen in love. Maybe he wouldn’t suffer so much grief to be the partner of a genius whose purpose in life is too magical and momentous for any muggle man to comprehend. But for all the pain he’s been put through, for all the blood, sweat, and tears, for all their fights and misunderstandings, he’s felt happiness he never thought he’d ever deserve, and it’s all because of that man, that silly, beautiful, magical man.

And that man is _his_.

He didn’t leave him to die all those years ago, to be blown up out in no-man’s land in France, and he’s not about to leave him here in this fucking subway either.

“Change of plan. Take this,” he abruptly thrusts the case into Queenie’s startled grasp, “I’m going in.”

“Wait—Jacob!”

But he ignores her cry and sprints down the length of the tunnel, his footing on the slick path as sure as the thrumming tether that connects him to Newt. There’s a buzzing that gets louder the closer he gets to where Newt must be, a crackling pop like static in wool cloth, and the air smells thick and burning and otherworldly. The noose tightens, stifling.

Up ahead, the tunnel curves around a bend, and he knows in his bones that he will find Newt there, but it will do him no good if he jumps into action without thought because it could end up with him dead or worse, even though every part of him is screaming at him to get to Newt now, to make the pain locking up his joints to stop. With grudging reluctance, he slows down, takes a deep breath. A glance back and there’s Queenie, still so far away, but coming ever closer. He grits his teeth. What he’s about to do, no lady should ever have to witness.

Resolved, he draws the revolver from his waistband, cocks it, and puts his back to the wall, keeps to the shadows, just like he was trained to all those years ago for a war he volunteered to fight in. His steps are measured, his breathing even despite the pounding of his heart, moving closer to the commotion, closer to the destruction, closer to Newt. He may not have magic, may not have that special something about him that would let him fight a wizard under normal circumstances, but he does have this and he has a reason good enough to commit to it, a will strong enough to keep from bending and breaking under the personal consequences such action will induce.

No magic user that he knows of has this.

He rounds the curve—and there’s Newt, grunting bitten off curses and convulsing against the train tracks from the lightning Graves keeps directing at him in spurts with his wand—takes aim with steady hands despite the nerves and adrenaline surging through him, despite the needle pricks of Newt’s pain he can still feel spidering along his veins, and shouts, “Hey, hot shot—how’s about you fuck off!”

Graves looks up, face twisted and wild, a flicker of something not quite right—

A loud, ear splitting crack.

The gunshot echoes through the tunnel for several beats, silence falling in to fill the spaces it leaves as it fades away. His ears are ringing, the recoil both a familiar and dreaded ache in his arms. The lightning flickers and cuts out, and in his peripheral, Jacob can see Newt curling in on himself, feels the bloom of his relief and the lingering fear and the steady burning ache of pain, but Jacob doesn’t move yet, keeps the gun trained on its target, his thumb on the hammer.

You take care of the threat before you rescue the wounded, his commander used to say, because otherwise you could find yourself dead, and how can you be of use to anyone like that?

Graves stares at him with wide eyes, his mouth open and gaping and red, red, red, before looking down at his chest like he’s having difficulty comprehending what just happened, like he doesn’t recognize the sight of his own blood pumping out in rivulets as it stains the fabric of his coat darker and darker until its soaked with it. _Drip, drip, drip_ on the concrete. He sways in place for a moment and topples over the side of the platform, landing on the gravel with a heavy, solid thud, and then doesn’t move.

Jacob pauses for a moment, breath hitching, but at Newt’s groan, he finally breaks and rushes over to Newt’s side, the gun a dangerous weight in his hand that he carefully puts aside in favor of the living warmth of his partner.

“Newt—hey, sweetheart,” his voice comes out soft and wrecked as he hefts the younger man into his arms, palming his pinched face, his throat, his chest, fingers hovering nervously over where electrical burns are already surfacing, raw and angry.

“S’not as bad as it looks—nothing a little burn paste won’t cure. Managed to redirect some of it,” Newt stutters out between wavering breaths, his teeth chattering, his body a singed, shivering mess. His eyelids flutter, and for a second, Jacob thinks he might pass out, but Newt shakes his head and focuses those beautiful green eyes on him. “Are you okay?”

Jacob laughs, but it gets caught in his throat, comes out choked. “I should be asking you that.”

“I’ll be fine,” Newt slurs, his hand waving about and nearly hitting Jacob in the face with his wand. Jacob catches it in one of his own, holds it secure and relishes in the strength of sinew and muscle and vitality there.

“Credence!” he hears Tina shout from down the corridor.

He whips his head around, and down a ways is Tina, her face tilted up, hands raised as if in supplication. But there’s also the obscurus, a miasma hanging ominous and terrifying on the crumbling ceiling, shifting sluggishly about as if it’s tired. His heart stumbles in his chest. It doesn’t take much for an obscurus to go batshit, after all, and even a docile obscurus is a dangerous one. Without taking his eyes off of it, he moves to grab his gun, wonders if an ordinary bullet could stop an obscurus without hurting its host, it’s not like they’ve tried before—

“No,” Newt says, gripping his hand tight in his own so he can’t. His eyes are sad. “S’fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Let Tina take care of Credence.” But it’s so hard, standing by and watching her open herself to danger like this; one wrong word or step and she could die. Her words are unintelligible from this distance, but her tone is soft and empathetic when its echo reaches them. There’s a soft intake of breath behind them, and Queenie appears beside them, her face flushed. She collapses gracefully to the ground, the case propped against her knees, but she barely spares any of them a glance, all of her attention solely on her sister as Tina tries to coax the teenage boy out of the magic. Her knuckles are bone white and delicate looking under the strain of her grip on the case’s handle.

It almost doesn’t seem to be working, at first. If anything, the obscurus looks like it’s getting more restless, poised on the edge of ruin again. Instead of ripping Tina to shreds though, they watch, breath held, hearts pounding, as whisps begin to drift down to touch her fingers like bits of torn cloth, little by little, until into her arms, Credence reforms with a sob, the obscurus tucked safely away for the time being. They collapse to the ground as if their strings have been cut, Credence’s face tucked into Tina’s shoulder as she strokes her fingers in his hair.

Newt sags in his arms and sighs. As Jacob carefully slips the gun back into his waistband, he can’t help but ask, teasingly in that stuttering way one does from nerves, “I thought you said it would be fine.”

“I was right. It was fine. Now, be a dear and help me up, my love?” And for all that there’s a humoring twist to his words, his relief ripples behind Jacob’s ribs. It takes a little work and Queenie’s help to get Newt standing, and even afterward, they still have to keep close so he doesn’t fall. Jacob doesn’t mind though.

“I don’t mind neither, Jacob, but don’t think your heroics will let you off the hook for that stunt you pulled,” Queenie says, her expression kind, but her smile sharp and biting. Newt glances between them, interest vibrating along Jacob’s veins. Jacob huffs a strangled sound and nods, conceding the point. It really was rather reckless, what he did.

“Yes it was. Ain’t nothin smart about leaving your back-up behind, Mr. Kowalski.” There’s teeth in her smile now. Newt’s brows furrow as he turns to look at him, a familiar frustration rumbling deep in Jacob’s bones.

Ah, fuck.

“What in Merlin’s beard is she talking about?” Newt leans more heavily into his side, the arm he has draped over Jacob’s shoulder constricting almost menacingly, his gaze calculating. “Hmm?”

Jacob laughs again, this time shrill and uneasy. Christ, should’ve known better than to try and pull a fast one with her, even if by accident. Woman’s vicious.

“We’ll be discussing this later, Mr. Kowalski,” Newt says flatly, and ah man, there’s the last name. He’s in hot water now.

“You ain’t wrong, honey.” He’s not sure whose thought she’s responding to, but either way, she’s right.

With considerable effort, they make their way towards Tina and Credence, sparing little attention to the prone figure of Mr. Graves as they go, the gun a heavy weight at his back.

(And it’s not that Jacob doesn’t care, because he does. Too much, when it really comes down to it.

He’s been to war, has seen death and disease and blood and viscera that has no business being outside the confines of someone’s body, has wounded and maimed and killed countless people through his stint in the army, has wounded and maimed and killed a fair few during his and Newt’s travels around the world.

It never gets easy, taking a life.

It’s not something he takes to or that he enjoys, but it is a very complicated reality he faces every day with guilt and regret and sadness and no small amount of helplessness.

It’s supposed to be a last resort, when his fists fail him and Newt’s magic doesn’t pull through, when the going gets tough and there’s little hope that they’ll make it out alive. But the thing is, he will always pick Newt living through to see the next day over someone else, even over himself, because he is selfish and imperfect, and the need to protect and preserve is a feeling so violent it burns in him like a sun from the inside out.)

(It’s a sentiment that Jacob found out, a year into their travels, dazed and half-dead from a vitality draining potion some wizard crook saw fit to force feed him, is entirely, viciously mutual.

You know, if he hadn’t already known.

But man, what a reminder.)

Queenie and Newt both slant intense looks at him; hers filled with sadness and a quiet comfort, Newt’s with a fierce protectiveness that leaves Jacob’s entire body blazing with it. He flushes under the scrutiny and looks away.

When they reach Tina and Credence, Queenie cocks her head and passes the case to Jacob’s free hand. Newt slumps further into his hold so she can gently ease herself down into the huddle instead, pressing close and comforting at Credence’s shuddering back.

“Oh Credence, honey,” Queenie murmurs. “It’ll be alright.”

“How?” the boy heaves around a stilted breath, muffled by Tina’s coat. “I’m a monster,” comes miserable and nearly inaudible, but they all still catch it. And in this they all agree.

“Credence, no—”

“Oh, honey—”

“No, that’s not quite right,” Newt pointedly cuts in. He leans away from Jacob to touch the rigid curve of Credence’s shoulder until the boy looks up at him, eyes red and wet. The magizoologist smiles. “There are all manner of beasts and creatures the world over that are misunderstood as monstrous. But they’re not, and I should know,” his crooked smile melts into a firm and serious line, “People who are needlessly cruel and underhanded and manipulative, people like Grindelwald, those are monsters. They choose to be so. But you Credence, you’re no monster. Hurt and angry and sad, maybe, but not a monster.”

“But the obscurus—”

“Isn't a monster either, not really,” Jacob says.

Newt nods. “It's a disease, a parasite, a devastating force that’s hard on the host as well as those around them. It's not something you asked for, not something you can help.”

“But…” Credence begins hesitantly, trailing off. And Jacob’s sure of it, that he’s wanting to be reassured, wanting to be proven otherwise.

Ah, they’ve got him now.

“An obscurus isn't you. It's repressed magic, it's pain and suffering made manifest, and there's nothing monstrous about that except for the situation, the people that produced it,” Newt says, his voice unwavering.

Credence’s eyes widen and he blinks rapidly, surprised and something else, something small and vaguely hopeful.

“And Credence,” Tina says, soft and kind and utterly at odds with the coarse woman they first met those twenty some hours of non-stop mayhem ago, “Newt and Jacob, they know a way to help you, if you want it.”

“Help me?” The surprise morphs into a look of trepidation, tight and anxious and unsure, and he’s probably remembering the obscurus in the ice biome, but Jacob knows they can help him, knows they can get it right with him where they went wrong with her, with Jaleela (and he’s avoided thinking her name for so long now, still afraid and hurt and so very guilty, but it’s time he faced her properly, it’s time he remembered her the way she deserves, not as their failure, but as a bright, brilliant little girl who had smiled in her final moments. It’s the least he can do).

“Yes, we can,” Newt says, his voice leaden with steely promise, his expression intense and protective, his resolve a fire in his eyes, the echo of the sun in Jacob’s chest. He fists his hand in the waist of Newt’s coat. They won’t fail this time. It’s a conviction that vibrates along the very fibers of his being, chords plucked fierce and unwavering.

They refuse to fail.

Credence looks at Newt, his wet eyes roving over the hopeful, encouraging faces of the girls to land on Jacob. Jacob grins, lopsided and tired, but sincere.

“Okay,” Credence finally says, and though his smile looks more like an overwhelmed grimace, it’s one that says he believes them, that he’ll trust them with this, and that’s more than Jacob could have ever asked.

“Fantastic!” Queenie says, happy despite the cement dust still plastered to her skin. “You’ll be staying with us while the boys get things ready.”

“It shouldn’t take long. Most of the preparations are ready. We just need to— oh, for Merlin’s sake,” Newt cuts himself off with a mutter, glancing over his shoulder just as a storm of footsteps resound through the tunnels. From the corner of Jacob’s eye, the girls curl tense and protective over Credence as the Madam President appears around the corner, followed closely by an entourage of Aurors with wands at the ready. Jacob glances behind them, and there’s a group of Aurors there too, fanning out along the perimeter.

They’re surrounded on both sides.

Madam Picquery pulls up short, her eyes darting about the scene they must make: the damage done to the tunnel, from the holes punched in the walls to the spider web cracks in the ceiling; Graves face down in a pool of blood among the train tracks, unmistakable and still; the five of them huddled down some ways, battered and tired but unbroken.

She tilts her head the slightest bit, her eyes never straying from them. It’s a look that Jacob can feel on his skin, piercing and prodding. Two Aurors peel away from the group behind her to kneel at Graves’ side, gently turning him over. There’s a gasp. Jacob can’t help the twitch in his cheek, the flush that’s working itself up the back of his neck, but he refuses to look away, to yield. What he did was to protect the people he cares about. Surely she might understand that?

The flashing colors of a monitoring spell whisp into existence above Graves’ form. “He’s unconscious, but still alive… barely,” one of them says, her blonde hair the only recognizable feature from under the shadow of her hat as she initiates medical treatment with the beefy Auror beside her. A tension eases in Jacob’s chest even as Newt’s fingers drum a comforting rhythm into his shoulder.

“Can someone please explain what happened here,” and it isn’t a question, her voice is severe and expectant, commanding respect and compliance in the same note.

“Well, you see, Madam President,” Tina starts, stumbling when her superior settles the brunt of her gaze upon her. With a deep breath, Tina stands, tall and unbent and determined. Jacob can see, in the lines of her shoulders, the passion in her eyes, the Auror she’s claimed herself to be. “The truth, Madam President, is that there is an obscurial in the city.”

The President raises an elegant brow. “Yes, I’ve noticed that,” she says, smooth as silk.

“Mr. Graves was planning on using him.”

“To do what?” Her expression turns vaguely skeptical, though her voice doesn’t change, unflappable and regal even in this. Jacob would be in awe, if they weren’t on the receiving end of it.

“He wanted to use the obscurus, Madam President. I-I don’t know how, but I have the memories to prove it.”

“He seeked to use its power for his own gain,” Newt says and stands up a little straighter when Madam Picquery looks his way. Jacob uneasily lets him do so, lets him draw away, though not too far, knowing this is more about the pride and politics Newt is familiar with thanks to his pureblood upbringing. He may have never fit the mold, but that doesn’t mean he can’t play the part when push comes to shove. “I would even go so far as to say he planted the lethifold in that apartment building to divert MACUSA’s attention elsewhere, so he could find the obscurus for himself without worry of discovery.”

“That’s a serious accusation you’re making, Mr. Scamander.”

“It’s one I make knowing full well what the consequences are should I be proven false.”

“He’s right, Madam President,” Queenie says. “There’s something that just ain’t right with Mr. Graves. He used to be so easy to read, but I haven’t had a clear reading of him for weeks now,” her eyes widen, a spark of realization, “not since just before all this obscurus trouble started.”

Madam Picquery pauses for a moment, seemingly unmoved, but then her eyes focus in on Credence. The teen flinches. With all the subtlety of an erumpent, Jacob situates himself between the two of them, shrugging a little at her impassive look. Man, she really is hard to read. “And the obscurial?” she asks. “He broke our most sacred law and exposed the magical world to the no-majs of this city.”

“From where I was standing, Madam President, your Aurors,” Jacob’s tongue twists awkwardly around the word, but he keeps his tone light and questioning; he doesn’t want to offend the leader of the magical world in America, after all, “seemed to have the situation pretty under control?”

Her mouth thins just the slightest bit. “Be that as it may, he destroyed a good deal of our city, jeopardized the lives of magical and non-magical beings alike. We have yet to assess the entirety of the damage he inflicted, let alone the damage Mr. Scamander’s beasts inflicted—”

Newt jolts against him. Jacob can practically feel his hackles raising in response, ready to argue on behalf of his beasts, and Jacob’s right there with him.

“Madam President!” The beefy Auror interrupts from where he’s kneeling beside Mr. Gaves, his stubbled jaw a rigid line made sharper by the lights cast by the monitoring spell. “Something’s wrong here—he’s not responding to the treatment like he should.”

The blonde Auror looks up, shifting uneasily. “Madam President, I think this man may be under the influence of an illusion charm. We can’t stabilize him further without removing it.”

At the President’s sharp nod, the blonde Auror mutters something under her breath, the tip of her wand crackling orange.

Jacob has seen the effects of Polyjuice potion wear off a few times and it never looks comfortable, the way skin and bones seem to burble and bubble and shift to reform into its proper shape. This is nothing like that. The transformation here is smooth, almost seamless: dark hair lightening into blond from the roots out, curling in clumps; the lines around his mouth easing as the ones by his eyes and on his forehead deepen; his skin paling chalky and white; a moustache growing out white and neat above his upper lip.

A sharp intake of breath and a startled, stuttering, “It’s Gellert Grindelwald.”

Whispers break out among the amassed Aurors, quickly growing in volume and excitement. The hairs on the back of Jacob’s neck stand on end. Something dark and shivering echoes in his chest to the sound of Newt’s hitched breath and the clenching of his fingers into the meat of Jacob’s shoulder. The President raises her hand and all falls silent.

“How far into his treatment are you?” She asks, and her back’s gone ramrod straight, but her expression of dignified grace doesn’t falter.

“He’s as stable as I can get him, but he won’t survive much longer if we don’t get him some proper medical attention soon. The—the bullet nicked an artery, I think.”

“How long does he have?”

“Minutes, ma’am.”

A pin could be heard if dropped in the silence that follows, everyone holding their breath as they await Madam President’s orders, await her decision. Jacob’s glad to not be in her shoes, in this moment.

Finally: “Take him to medical, and make sure he passes with ease.” A flicker of something sad and dark crosses her face before fading back into regal solemnity. “Keep the monitor charms active for an accurate assessment of his condition.” To confirm that he’s dead, she doesn’t say, but Jacob knows it’s there, hovering behind her words.

“Yes, Madam President.” And with a crack, they’re gone, leaving only the gruesome puddle of blood where Grindelwald’s body had laid. Jacob’s heart feels heavy and bloated in his chest, but it’s a feeling he can live with, and that’s all that matters at this point, really.

“Who was it that disabled him?” Madam President’s voice shatters through the stillness.

Awkward and nervous, Jacob clears his throat. “That would be me, uh,” and because his _babcia_ didn’t raise an ill-mannered głupek, he hastily tacks on “ma’am.”

She looks at him, assessing, but whatever she sees, it must be enough for her not to have him sentenced to death on the sight. “What is your name, no-maj?”

“Jacob, Jacob Kowalski.”

“Jacob Kowalski. I’ve heard that name before… Oh, yes. I remember. You caused quite a stir for the last president some years ago, you and your… partner.” Her gaze cuts to Newt.

A lead weight drops in his stomach. Newt’s grip tightens into a bright, bruising brand. “Um.”

“You can’t have him,” Newt says, stiff and formal and hard, his lips twisted and derisive. His freckles stand out against the angry flush splotching his cheeks. “We’ve already gone through this seven years ago. Let’s not hash this out again, shall we?”

“Oi, Newt,” Jacob reprimands half-heartedly because, Christ, is this really happening? Again? Are they going to have to fight their way out of the U.S., this time with the possibility of never returning, absolutely ever?

Will they never be free here?

Will _Jacob_ ever be free here?

The President almost looks surprised by this, one of her perfectly poised eyebrows lifting. “I’d like to think I’m not in the habit of making the same mistakes made by my predecessors, Mr. Scamander,” her tone is verging on wry, but it quickly shifts to something cold and hard, “Though you would do well to remember that you’re under my jurisdiction during your stay here in America.”

Newt’s expression is intense, and he opens his mouth, to argue, to cut a scathing remark more than likely, but she beats him to it.

“Do not worry, Mr. Scamander. Even we understand what it means to try and break up a bonded pair.” The knot in Jacob’s chest loosens somewhat at that, but Newt remains tense beside him, his end of the bond lashing and vicious under Jacob’s ribs. Tina mutters something that sounds like _I knew it_ under her breath. Queenie’s giggle is breathless and faint. “Your case and the obscurus, however, must be dealt with accordingly.”

“No!” Tina interjects. The Aurors gathered around them shift, ready should their leader order their group of merry misfits to be apprehended. “Madam President, please—Newt and Jacob, they know a way to help Credence, to get rid of the obscurus once and for all.”

“Do you, Mr. Scamander?”

“Yes, it’s a treatment we’ve successfully performed before,” Jacob answers in Newt’s stead, the younger man’s emotions still a taut, volatile pressure along the bond. He purposefully leaves out the major detail of Jaleela’s death, but they won’t be letting that happen this time.

This time they’re prepared.

He believes in them.

“And how long, pray tell, will this treatment take?” And now she’s starting to sound tired, her regal persona cracking under the pressure of everything she’s likely been dealing with tonight, that she’s been dealing with for _weeks_. They’ve all been up for hours now. It appears, Jacob thinks, not even she can escape the needs of the mortal coil.

“A week, maybe two,” Newt finally says, terse. “We just need to find someone of magical compatibility. Everything else is more or less ready. All the major preparations are complete.”

Madam President’s eyes narrow, like she knows what’s coming next, and she probably does. She seems to be a very smart woman. She wouldn’t be the President otherwise. “And I’m assuming these preparations are located in that case of yours.”

“Afraid so.” Newt’s face betrays his words, looking the farthest one can be from apologetic. Jacob would kick him or jostle his arm in reprimand if he didn’t feel selfishly vindicated himself. She was talking about taking away their home, their livelihood. What did she expect?

A heavy pause, then: “You have your two weeks, Mr. Scamander, as recognition for the great service you and your partner have provided to us in the capture and subsequent execution of Gellert Grindelwald. After that, I want you to get that case out of my city.” The last of the tension flees Jacob’s body, triumph flooding in its stead, rebounding between the two of them, glowing and prideful. Madam President turns and gives Tina a loaded, pointed look. “Make sure this gets handled, or I will have someone handle it for them.”

Happy surprise reflects in Tina’s expression. “Yes, Madam President!”

President Picquery gestures and immediately, the congregated Aurors disperse, some apparating away (one spells the blood away with a wand flick and a glare before disappearing with a crack), many of them moving away on foot, probably to finish cleaning up the city or to _Obliviate_ or _Confund_ any remaining hysterical muggles or to get started on all the paperwork they’ll likely be facing after everything that’s happened. That’s certainly one level of commonality, Jacob’s noticed, between the world of muggles and magical beings: there’s always paperwork to be done, and it’s the bane of all existence.

“And boys,” Madam President calls, dry as a desert, as she retreats back through the tunnels. “Try not to destroy any more of my city.” And then she’s gone.

It’s quiet, but only for a moment before all five of them seem to heave a collective sigh of relief.

“Well, I’d say that went well,” Queenie says.

Newt slumps back into Jacob’s side with a groan. “Merlin’s beard.”

“We’ve been up for over a day,” Tina says wryly. “I’d say we could all use a nap.

“Brilliant idea, Miss Goldstein,” Newt says. At Jacob’s raised eyebrow and insistent prod along the bond, he grudgingly adds, “After I’ve treated my burns.”

“We’ve got burn cream at the apartment,” Queenie offers.

“Sounds like a plan,” Jacob says. Credence huffs something approximating a laugh, though it’s brittle and a little sad. It worries Jacob, a bit, but they have two weeks to work things out, so he shelves it for now. Instead, he focuses on Newt, his silly, captivating, magical man. Affection swells large and incomprehensible in his chest even as they smile helplessly at each other.

God, how he loves him.

“Let’s go home,” Queenie says, her curled hair limp and dusty, but her smile tugging bright at the corners of her mouth. Her cheeks dimple and she winks, just as subtle as always (which is not at all). She gently grabs Credence’s hand. “Come on, sugar.” They vanish.

“Coming?” Tina asks.

“In a moment,” Newt says, but he’s already distracted as he palms at Jacob’s chest, brushing his hands along the filthy curve of his shoulders, at the bruising on his wrists from shackles and fingers alike, the cut on his cheek that he hadn’t even noticed until Newt’s fingers touched its stinging line.

Tina grumbles, overly exasperated but with something almost fond lurking in the edges. They may grow on her yet. “Well, hurry along.”

And then it’s just the two of them.

“Still not as bad as when you were bleeding out from that shrapnel in your shoulder,” Newt says, and Jacob can’t help but laugh.

Newt ducks down, bumping their noses in a gesture that never ceases to make Jacob’s heart go all a flutter, God, this man, and kisses him, sweet and deliberate and tasting of something singed and forever. Newt hums appreciatively, the sound vibrating between them. Happiness and relief spools out between them in equal measure, warm and sure. They may not always make it out of disaster unscathed, carrying their scars and their burdens with them wherever they go, but they make it out together, and that’s all that matters.

Jacob pulls away to nuzzle the line of Newt’s throat, nosing along the cut of his jaw, over the smooth scar that flares like a starburst there, until Newt huffs and grabs Jacob’s face in his scarred hands to drag him back into another kiss. And another and another and another, their hearts beating in time with each other, two halves of a whole.

 

****

 

Jacob and Newt find out about the Second Salem Church through happenstance.

They’re in Madame Romano’s Bakery, Newt a heavy, sleepy weight at his side as they wait in line to get breakfast to bring back for Credence and the girls. The warm fragrance of buttery pastries and sugary treats has Jacob suppressing yawns and pangs of nostalgia in equal measure. Not much has changed inside the little shop from the memories Jacob has; Madame Romano may have passed long ago, but still her influence and taste in gaudy, strange antique decorations remain. Jacob hides another yawn behind his hand, still feeling worn and tired despite sleeping for nearly twenty-four hours straight, curled close at Newt’s back in their bed in the workshop, in their home, which they get to keep, thank God.

“Did you hear? About that dreadful Salemers Church?” A woman decked out in pearls murmurs almost conspiratory to her friend. She’s three people ahead of them in line, but her voice rings loud and clear in the morning hush of bleary eyed people still trying to wake up. Jacob’s ears prick up. Newt’s weight shifts to lean further into him, obviously listening for all that his eyes are still closed.

“What about it?” her friend asks, a bored expression on her face.

“Well, I heard that there was a gas explosion yesterday morning, perfectly awful, like the ones that occurred all across the city.”

“How terrible.”

“And I heard,” here her voice dips low, a stage whisper, “that the wicked woman who ran it was found dead, her and her eldest daughter, how sad. The poor children, orphans once more.”

The friend nods, twirling a strand of brunette hair around her finger. Unconcerned. “How awful.”

Jacob glances down, catches Newt’s narrowed gaze with his own.

“An actual gas explosion. No magic involved, no foul play. From the looks of things, it was going to happen sooner or later. It’s just a coincidence it happened that same morning,” Tina says over the coffee and pastries they came back to the apartment with. She stuffs another rose flavored macaron into her mouth with an appreciative sigh and an offended mutter of _how have we never eaten there before?_

“The investigators were very sure in their assessments,” Queenie agrees.

The girls had spent the better part of yesterday at the Congress building while the others slept the day away, going over their versions of events with the President and her advisors. It’s something the rest of them have been invited (read: vaguely threatened) to do over the next few days. Jacob’s own appointment is set for the day after tomorrow. He’s not looking forward to it, not after how the last few times he’s been in that building went, but he understands what they’re trying to do. They had a gigantic breach in their security, after all.

Credence picks at his apple tart, his mouth a flat line. “What are they going to do with the others?”

“The others?” Tina blinks. “Oh, you mean Modesty and the other street orphans?”

Credence nods.

“Well, probably nothing, unfortunately.” She shoots him an apologetic look that he doesn’t see. “It was a non-magical event, and MACUSA tends to leave those alone, let the no-majs handle them on their own.”

“Just because it’s non-magical, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t help out, if they have the means,” Jacob huffs. He crosses his arms, shrugs off Newt’s tentative hand from his shoulder. “I know, I know. The Statute of Secrecy is so very important. I’m just saying, there has to be a way to help these kids out somehow without them finding out about magic.”

Tina looks doubtful.

But before she can say anything, Queenie speaks up, contemplative. “There ain’t really anything the Congress can do, but there might be something we can.”

Credence looks up at her, eyes bright.

The subsequent few days are a whirlwind of activity.

Jacob attends his appointment with Madam President and her advisors. It is as harrowing and frustrating as he expects it to be, between the nonchalant insults to his intelligence and the snide comments the President’s advisors inject every other sentence. He comes out of the office and immediately tucks himself into Newt’s awaiting arms to take a few deep breaths not tainted by political bias and normalized prejudice, taking comfort in the coal hot anger in his gut that Newt reins in only because he knows it would do them no good to tear them apart, the confused receptionist be damned. Backwards ideas of muggles indeed. They apparate back to the apartment, and Jacob holes himself in the girls’ tiny kitchen, stress baking jelly filled _pączki_ and vanilla flavored _karpatka_ until the entire apartment smells of cooking dough and melting sugar.

“I can’t believe Madam President just let them get away with saying things like that,” Tina says from her spot at the table, having stumbled in long after dinner time with Queenie and Credence in tow. Credence’s own debriefing appointment had been today too, though with more success than Jacob’s, he thinks, irritated at his own predicament but mostly just grateful. The kid has been through enough.

“It is what it is,” Jacob mutters, carefully transferring the oven-hot jelly filled donuts to a cooling tray he’d had to unearth from inside his stash of baking utensils in the case’s kitchen. The girls rarely baked or cooked without magic, which meant they had little use for most culinary tools.

“You shouldn’t have to deal with that,” Newt says. The rest of their little gang makes various noises of agreement.

Jacob sighs, but doesn’t disagree.

Newt goes to his debriefing the day after, though it lasts a great deal longer than the rest of theirs had. What should have been a handful of hours spans almost the entire day. Jacob gets to know that particular receptionist, a beautiful witch with freckles and a penchant for waxing poetic about her gal, quite well as the hours pass. Once she’d gotten over her almost insulting curiosity over Jacob being a no-maj that is. Apparently, being bonded to a man from a prestigious, pureblood family like the Scamanders is a bigger deal than being non-magical, even if that man is just the “younger brother.”

“They didn’t just want my order of events,” Newt admits later that night as they’re making their way around the city, a vial of Credence’s magic in one hand and a spelled army compass in the other. The sky is a twilight patchwork of sun and stars and thick clouds threatening snow. Their search for someone of magical compatibility has not yet born fruit, but they’re not too concerned. This is only the second night they’ve gone out and they haven’t even touched the secret magical districts of the city yet. Tina’s even offered to take them to a ritzy jazz club called the Blind Pig to explore, and he’s interested in going, if only because wizards have good, and by that he means fun, taste in alcohol (if they happen to find the compatible person there, well, more power to them).

They mostly stick to the main roads and the occasional side street, easing through the foot traffic and the nearly solid wall of honking, dangerous automobiles clogging up New York City’s streets now that the muggle mayor has revoked the city wide curfew (a decision many muggles believe was hastily made if the gossip is to be believed, but which Jacob has a feeling was encouraged in some way by a particular underground magical government), taking with it most of the manic tension that had blanketed the city. No one seems to be any the wiser for what had happened that long night or the weeks leading up to it. MACUSA, in this at least, did a good job in covering their asses. All the traffic makes for some annoying encounters and maneuvers to keep out of people’s ways, but it does give them the excuse to push closer together, their shoulders brushing with every step.

He’s not complaining. Not too much anyway.

Their breath mists out in front of them, Newt looking particularly adorable all bundled up in his coat and yellow striped scarf. More than once, hidden in the shadows where no one can see them, Jacob can’t help but press a kiss to the chilled slant of Newt’s jaw or nose at the shoulder of his coat when he thinks the magizoologist will least expect it. Every time, without fail, Newt ducks his head and flushes in surprise, but the pleased tingle along Jacob’s veins only encourages him to do it again.

He can’t believe, sometimes, how something as simple as a kiss can still have such an effect on this man, even after seven years.

To be fair, he isn’t any better.

“So what else did they want?” Jacob asks, skirting closer to Newt to avoid being run over by a group of excitable children.

The MACUSA, Newt explains, wanted his knowledge of lethifolds, of the obscurus, of the magical creatures that had escaped the case. They wanted to know more about the preparations for the obscurus extraction and how that all worked and how dangerous it will be for everyone involved. They inquired about his impression of Tina, of her qualities as a witch, as an agent.

“It’s all thanks to you,” Tina thanks him again, smiling gratefully, her reinstated Auror badge clutched in hand. Jacob hasn’t seen her without it since she came back to the apartment with it earlier the day before. He wonders if she goes to bed with it in hand too and can’t quite keep from laughing when Queenie and Newt both snort, amusement not his own curling around Jacob’s ribs and twinkling in Queenie’s blue eyes. Credence smiles confusedly, small but growing ever more sure, glancing between the three of them.

Tina rolls her eyes but doesn’t ask.

“Really, it was no problem at all,” Newt finally says, brushing off Tina’s thanks with an awkward wave of his hand. “They already know you’re a capable Auror. They just needed a reminder.”

The end of that first week closes unexpectedly with a few things falling nicely into place, a pleasant turn considering Jacob’s entire experience up to this point since stepping foot into New York again.

“It’s done,” Credence says, something like wonder in his voice as he looks up at the newly fixed rafters of the Second Salemers Church. While Newt and Jacob have been out looking for someone of magical compatibility almost every night, the Goldstein sisters have been steadily working with Credence to magically repair the damage done to the church building from the gas explosion. They were even doing it within the law, as Tina likes to point out, thanks to a building permit they acquired from the Congress (a permit which normally takes months to acquire, but only took a day thanks to President Piquery. Perhaps she meant it when she said MACUSA learns from its mistakes). The only stipulation was that they had to work slowly so as not to incur no-maj suspicion.

“And it’s even better than before.” Queenie dimples, her hand on Credence’s shoulder. The boy leans into it easily. “No more mold or rickety stair steps or leaking pipes.”

“It doesn’t look like a haunted house anymore either,” Tina adds. Jacob hates to imagine how it looked originally, but whatever the girls did to fix the place up, they did a good job of it. It looks more like a home than a church, and it’s furnished well if a bit oddly thanks to some handy transfiguration, but maybe that’s for the best. Gives it character.

“Looks great.” Jacob grins. Newt has already disappeared upstairs and they can hear him pacing about through the floorboards. They all exchange various looks tinged with confusion and affection.

“Protection charms,” Newt says when he returns. He shrugs, clearly oblivious to the awed stare Credence is sending his way. Jacob pats the teen on the arm; he understands the feeling.

“We’re set to interview someone tomorrow concerning the upkeep and handling of the building and its funds, a squib named Lenora Killick,” Tina says.

“I have a good feeling about her, seemed very kind when I met with her for lunch the other day,” Queenie says. Then, the slightest flush on her delighted face, “She’s beautiful too.”

Tina shakes her head and sighs. “That way, should any of the orphans prove to be magical, then there’s someone there to help them along. Properly.” Someone who will accept them, someone who won’t force them to repress their magic, none of them say. “And once she’s hired and all the paperwork is processed, the building can officially be reopened.”

“As an orphanage, a real one,” Credence says, the most resolved Jacob has seen him yet. “No more Second Salemers.”

As if finishing the orphanage isn’t enough good luck to happen to them, in the end, they don’t need to look too far for someone of magical compatibility.

MACUSA Aurors found the real Mr. Graves before the week was up, bound up in a magical chest in the closet of his apartment, a little worn and tired and angry, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Grindelwald had snuck up on him, in his own home, Tina tells them over dinner that night, only checking on him to give him just enough food and water to subsist on. Jacob wonders why a supposed egomaniac like Grindelwald would have kept Mr. Graves alive, but he’s not sure he really wants to know.

“It’s because he’s so handsome and nice to look at,” Queenie whispers to Jacob.

He blinks at her.

Wait. What?

She raises an eyebrow.

…Oh.

So, like, a trophy?

Yeah, no. He decides that he’s okay with being in the dark, for the most part, doesn’t want to know anything more about this, nothing else, please, thank you.

She giggles, high and ringing like a bell, and it spurs him on to join her, the both of them loud and wheezing under the exasperated looks of the others.

“Oh, darling. What am I going to do with you?” Newt asks later, his voice rough as he unbuttons Jacob’s shirt, tossing it aside to join his waistcoat and trousers on the floor of their bedroom. Newt cups his jaw, cradles his face in his hands.

“I don’t know,” Jacob says, breathless as he always is in the face of this beautiful man perched in his lap. He drags his hands down Newt’s freckled sides, thumbing over ribs and old scars and healed electrical burns, leaning down to nuzzle and kiss one just to hear the hitch in Newt’s breath, feel the tremble of affection and need along the bond. “But whatever you decide, I’m in.”

Newt laughs, the ridiculous one that makes his nose crinkle and his eyes turn into little half-moons, the one Newt hates, but which Jacob finds utterly irresistible. Jacob’s heart stutters even as he leans in to meet Newt’s mouth for a heated kiss, feeling full to burst with everything he feels for this man. His silly, wonderful, magical man.

God, he loves him.

And he spends the rest of the night telling him so, would spend the rest of his life telling his so if he can. With every word and moan and kiss and bite, with every bruise and twist of his hips and grasp of his hands, he tells him, Newt answering him in kind until they’re both panting and sweaty and completely worn out.

“You make the best decisions,” Jacob says into the perfect jut of his hip, the skin under his mouth a stinging red from his moustache and teeth, his fingers tracing over an Orion’s Belt of freckles on his thigh. Newt hums, dazed and probably well on his way to sleep, but his hand is steady as it strokes through Jacob’s hair. “I knew there was a reason why I married you.”

Newt tugs his hair hard enough to hurt, a petulant frown on his flushed face though he doesn’t open his eyes, but it isn’t something a few kisses and whispered sweet nothings can’t fix.

They discover Mr. Graves’ compatibility perfectly by accident, though from the sly flare along the bond, Jacob thinks Newt may have had his suspicions. How he could have possibly known, Jacob isn’t sure. He may have known Newt for over seven years now, may be bonded to the man, may have a small look into how he feels, but that doesn’t mean he always knows what the man is thinking.

Newt is a puzzle in and of himself, one Jacob’s happy to mull over for the rest of his days.

Agh, and there he goes getting sappy again.

He shakes his head.

“I’ve been the one assigned to oversee this entire… experiment,” Mr. Graves says after he’s officially introduced himself.

Jacob admits, he wasn’t sure he wanted to let the guy in on all this, not after everything Grindelwald did. Yeah, he may not be the _same_ guy, except for how he kind of is, but already Jacob can see the difference between Grindelwald in disguise and this man, the real Percival Graves. He’s almost visibly softer, tired but still solid and firm in the shoulders, in the straight line of his back. Even the way he moves is just slightly different. Grindelwald had played at being much more reserved, less likely to show weakness, yet with more dramatic flair, from the little he saw of the man.

It makes Jacob wonder how Grindelwald could have gotten away with pretending to be a man he wasn’t for so long.

It had been for months, Tina had said.

“Yes, of course, Mr. Graves.” Newt nods, leading the way into the suitcase to the temporary sectioned off area they created for the extraction. A not biome, it’s a small, oval area with two beds and a long table cluttered with everything they’ll need. The curtained walls flutter with the wind from the biomes surrounding it, shiny with the spells Newt covered it in to keep unwanted creatures out.

Not too shabby, Jacob thinks. And Graves seems to agree, if his vague look of approval is any indication.

Newt walks Graves through the procedure, picking things up and putting them down as he explains. He digs through a small velvet bag, pulls out the vial and compass. “And this is how we will find those who are magically compatible to Credence. It’s something we created while we were in Sudan.”

“How does it work?” Graves asks, his brows furrowed.

Newt’s gaze turns expectant, assessing. “Like this,” and he activates it.

In the presence of non-compatible people, the needle will drift aimlessly about in circles, slow and sluggish. Should the compass be close to someone of compatibility, however, it will spin to face the direction they are located. It’s all just a matter of being close enough in proximity to this person in order for the compass to pick up their magical signature. And pick it up it does.

Immediately, the needle spins in a few rapid circles before settling on Graves.

The three of them are silent for a moment, then Graves sighs. It’s not a particularly happy one, but it almost sounds thankful. But thankful for what?

“I’m compatible then?”

“It would seem so, Mr. Graves.”

“Please, call me Percival. It appears we will be working together closely.”

“So you accept then? You’re allowed to decline, if you feel you must. Consenting participants are easiest to work with, when it comes to things such as this.”

“Yes,” Graves says without hesitation. His mouth flattens. “I’ve been told what Grindelwald has done in my stead, and I feel a responsibility for what happened to the boy, to… Credence.”

“But it wasn’t you,” Jacob interjects, eyebrows raised.

“Be that as it may, I can’t help but feel as if his suffering at Grindelwald’s hand is, in part, my fault.”

Newt puts the vial and compass away, tugs awkwardly at his sleeves. “You know, had it not been you, Grindelwald would have chosen someone else to impersonate, would have done the same things, most likely.”

Graves shakes his head. “But it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to do it, if he wasn’t impersonating the Director of Magical Security and the head of MACUSA’s Magical Law Enforcement.”

Well, can’t really argue with that logic.

They properly introduce Credence to Percival the day before they plan to do the procedure.

It goes about as well as expected.

Tina and Queenie offer their apartment for the meeting, it being the closet thing Credence has for a home right now and thus being the place he’s most comfortable (though the girls had their own errands to run, leaving the boys to sit in the kitchen in awkward silence). It’s definitely a strange sight, Jacob thinks, watching the two of them interact in stiff conversation over the rim of his coffee mug. Credence is timid and tense, never looking up for long, his hands clenched in his lap. His tea sits untouched. Graves isn’t much better honestly, stiff as a board with all the conversational skills of one. He shoots Newt an incredulous look and receives a vage approximation of a shrug. What can you do?

When Graves leaves, Jacob asks Credence, “So… What do you think?”

The teen stares off into space and shakes his head. “I’m not sure.”

“Do you accept him as your magic donor?” Newt asks.

“I think so.”

Newt gives Credence a sidelong look. “He doesn’t have to be the one. We can keep looking.”

“U-um, well…” Credence pauses. “Yes, yes I accept.”

“Well, alright then.” Jacob claps Credence on the back. “Let’s get the show on the road, yeah?”

The next morning dawns bright and early at the start of their last week there. Credence, when he finally comes stumbling down the ladder into the workshop, looks for all the world like he hardly slept at all, purple bruises smudged under his eyes. Graves shows up soon after, a woman with red braids and a silver necklace following in tow, appearing to not have fared much better than Credence. “This is Healer Fawley,” Graves says. “By order of Madam President, she’s here to assist you with the treatment.”

She’s probably here to supervise as much as she’s here to support Newt—Graves is a pretty important fella, after all—and they are doing a pretty experimental treatment, but Newt doesn’t seem to care. He wastes no time directing her about as needed to fetch this and that, to prepare the beds and get the two patients settled, to get the monitoring charms spelled.

"Ready?" Newt finally asks, offering Credence the vial of opalescent liquid.

He nods, looking scared and anxious, his eyes darting around to everyone’s faces, even Graves’.

"Don't worry, we won't let anything bad happen to you," Jacob reassures when he looks at him, because if there’s one thing he knows, it’s that. He takes his place behind the work table with Tina and Queenie, there to observe, to be back up if needed, but otherwise out of the way.

"Promise?" Credence asks in a small voice.

"Of course," Tina says.

"We'll be right here when you wake up, okay honey?" Queenie smiles.

Credence nods and, after a moment’s hesitation, drinks the draining potion, wrinkling his nose at the taste.

"Let's begin," Newt says, taking his seat between the two beds. At his nod, the healer induces a sleep spell over the two patients and raises a sterile field around the three of them.

From there, it’s a bit of a waiting game. Credence’s monitor shows some flickering, some lights changing, but Newt mutters about _good progress_ and _shouldn’t be long now_ , so Jacob tries not to worry too much. He’s a worrier, what can he say?

With Jaleela, it had only taken seconds for the potion to take visible effect, for the obscurus to succumb to the potion. With Credence, it takes nearly ten minutes.

Jacob can tell when the potion finally takes hold, the girls gasping, even the healer appears startled: a blackness starts seeping out of Credence’s pours like sweat to wisp up and into the air before vanishing. The flow of it isn’t steady by any means, some of it coming out in ghostly spurts, other times streaming out like arterial blood. It doesn’t take long after that though; the potion, at least, is effective and efficient in this. The flow of the wisps leaking from Credence’s skin slows and then stops, the monitor charm hovering over him flashing an angry red. That’s when the real work starts. Newt raises his wand and starts the incantation, two glowing tendrils unfurling out from the tip of his wand to attach to the centers of the patients’ chests. Jacob crosses his fingers and believes.

Newt’s got this.

It takes several hours, half of which Jacob spends pacing behind the table, his eyes never leaving Newt. It’s the stillest Jacob’s ever seen him, this man who’s movement is normally a fidgeting constant, a fact of the universe. It’s almost unnatural, this stillness. If not for the occasional tremble Jacob can see flit through his raised arms, the slightest flicker of movement behind his closed eyes, the increasingly hoarse murmur of the incantation, he would mistake Newt for a statue. It doesn’t even seem like he’s breathing. Not even the bond reacts or changes, having settled into a constant buzz in Jacob’s bones.

Queenie shoots him a sympathetic smile despite the white cast to her skin.

It’s only as the sun reaches its highest point in the case that Newt finally calls the procedure to an end. Jacob is the first to reach his side once the healer lowers the sterile field, catching him as he collapses sideways off the chair.

"We'll know if the magic took in a couple hours," Newt mumbles, brows furrowed. Then he sighs, burrowing his face further into Jacob’s chest, and passes out. Jacob presses a kiss to his temple, equal parts pride in his magical man and concern he might be running a fever as he sometimes does after intense use of magic. But he feels okay. Jacob presses another to his cheek, just to make sure.

“Should we move him to a bed?” Tina asks, coming up beside him.

But Jacob just shakes his head. “Nah, I’ve got him. Won’t be long before he wakes up.” And it shouldn’t be. The worst part about being a conduit, more than anything, is the stress. Newt told him once, when they were finally talking about everything that happened in Sudan with Jaleela, that being a conduit actually takes very little magic on his part. He just has to constantly be aware of whether he’s absorbing the transferred magic himself or if he’s accidently transferring some of his own along with it. It’s a very delicate procedure.

The healer gives Newt a once over, just to be sure, before she goes back to fussing over Credence and Graves. Queenie shoots him a tentative smile from Credence’s bedside, her hand curled around his.

With nothing to do but wait, Jacob pets at Newt’s sweaty fringe and counts down the minutes before he wakes up.

 

****

 

The magic takes.

Of course it takes—they went in fully prepared this time, had everything planned down to the last possible letter, there was no way they could have failed… except for all the ways they could have.

(Graves was up and walking within a couple hours, a vast contrast to Credence, who didn’t wake up until the sun was just starting to set. With a lingering, unreadable glance towards the unconscious Credence and a quiet “Raven me if you need anything else,” he was gone.

“Well, that makes sense,” Tina had said as she watched Healer Fawley putter around the room and give Credence another diagnostic. “With how long he’s been using magic, he’s probably built up enough reserves to be okay with giving some away.”

“That, and the one giving is doing merely that, giving. The one the magic is being transferred to has the added obstacle of either absorbing or rejecting the transfusion, which is a lot of work in and of itself,” Newt mumbled around his third cup of tea. Jacob ran a content hand along his side, pausing to dig his fingers in the ribs found there and smirking to himself when Newt squeaked and nearly choked on his tea.

He got a lapful of lukewarm tea for his trouble.

Ah, well. Worth it.)

“So, that’s it?” Credence asks, tossing another handful of floating pellets to the hungry mooncalves nibbling at his clothes.

It had taken him a couple days, but he’s finally back on his feet and stumbling along after them during feeding time. The bruises under his eyes have faded to dull smudges and, with the way Tina, Queenie, and Jacob all insist on stuffing him full of food and pastries at any given time of day, it won’t be long before he’ll have some meat on his bones.

“Yes,” Newt says, and he looks at Jacob, his smile turning smug and triumphant. “There shouldn’t be any negative side effects. If there were going to be, they would have surfaced by now.”

He’s already exhibiting signs of accidental magic too, the nonviolent, pure kind that children and adolescents can’t help.

“A good sign,” Healer Fawley says faintly. When they’d messaged her through the Raven Mail to apparate over, this probably wasn’t what she had been expecting.

They all watch as a mooncalf floats along the ceiling of the case just peeking through the spelled cloudscape, Credence’s gaping look of horror a perfect match to the look the mooncalf gives them as it flails about in midair, nearly colliding with a ruffled Frank. The thunderbird squawks in annoyance.

Jacob hides a snort into Newt’s shoulder, amusement curling warm behind his ribs.

“I’ve spoken to Headmistress Macdonald,” Tina tells them in hushed tones the next day. Their two weeks are almost up, with only five days left to tie up any loose ends before they head back to England. It’s not Belarus, but MACUSA wants them to return to Newt’s home country, or whatever. It’s all political trash to Jacob. Newt needs to finish working on his book properly anyway though, and he always complains that he edits best on English soil, so why not? There’s a cottage in the Scottish highlands they procured around the time they helped take down that illegal fur trading business that’s just sitting there, waiting for them to come air it out. Laughter floats through the sitting area from the kitchen where Queenie is attempting to teach Credence some of the simpler food magic she uses, and a pang strikes through Jacob’s chest as he watches them. He’s going to miss this. “She’s happy to accept him into Ilvermorny on a tailored class schedule at the start of next semester.”

“Where will he go until then?” Newt asks. He’s picking at the skin around his fingernails, a worried tick Newt’s not always aware he’s doing. Jacob gives in to the urge and laces their hands together. Newt blinks at him, but he doesn’t pull away. Instead, his fingers start _tap, tap, tap_ ing away at Jacob’s knuckles to the beat of the pulse in their veins.

Tina’s look is bordering on offended. “He would stay here, of course.”

Newt raises an eyebrow. “And for breaks? In a housing complex where men are prohibited?”

“It’s worked out so far.”

“But what if he gets caught?”

“Then we’ll just tell Mrs. Esposito that he’s a visiting nephew or something. She forbids us from having gentlemen callers on the premises, not family.” Her tone has taken a turn for exasperated. “What is this really about?”

“Nothing,” Newt says, too quickly. He shakes his head and changes the subject with all of the grace of a gnome. That is to say, none at all. At Tina’s look, Jacob shrugs. What little he can feel through the bond at the moment is murky at best, closed in a way that means Newt wants privacy more than anything.

That doesn’t mean Jacob will leave well enough alone. It’s not in his nature.

Once they’ve retired to their bed for the night, Jacob crowds in close to Newt’s back, presses a kiss to his nape. “You know he can’t come with us.”

There’s a moment of silence. And for a second, Jacob’s almost sure he won’t even deign to respond, but finally, Newt slumps back into him, opens back up to him until Jacob can feel everything, easy as breathing. “I know.”

“I’m sure we could arrange for him to visit over one of his breaks, sometime.”

“Hmm.”

“Hey,” he presses another kiss to Newt’s neck, brushes his moustache there until visible goosebumps break out across his freckled skin.

This time the younger man laughs, soft and muffled by the way he buries his face into the pillow to get away before wiggling around to face him, his hands coming up to cup his neck, his face, fingers fitting into curves and angles that had to be made for them, they fit so well, God damn. Newt strokes a long finger over the curve of his eye brows, down the slant of his nose, and hums when Jacob kisses it when it comes into range. “Hi.”

“Everything’ll be okay.”

Newt’s smile turns lopsided, a few lingering strains of worry licking along the bond and then easing. “I know.”

“Hey.”

“What?” A huff and Newt’s thumbs move to brush along his jaw in little back and forth motions.

“Before we leave, I want to take you to meet my _babcia_ , her and my parents.”

Newt’s fingers pause, and he catches Jacob’s gaze and holds it, eyes wide. “Really?”

It’s Jacob’s turn to laugh. “It’s about time they met my husband.”

He blinks, once, twice, before heaving forward to crash their mouths together into something that quickly turns hot and slick when Jacob manages to flick his tongue along the full swell of Newt’s bottom lip. Then, it’s all teeth and tongue and a desperate ache in his chest that only eases the closer he’s pressed to Newt, limbs tangling and twisting and pushing and pulling until he feels like he could fit right into the bones of him, hide away in the marrow, in the veins where he can feel their pulse surging along, until he can’t differentiate where he ends and Newt begins.

It’s altogether not the best kiss they’ve ever shared—he’s pretty sure there’s some blood involved from a split lip if the faint coppery tang is anything to go by though he has no idea who’s (not that it matters, really)—but it’s certainly not the worst by any means.

 

****

 

They take a train out to Arizona.

Well, they take it part of the way, and it was one of the worst travel experiences Jacob’s ever had, and he’s sailed over the Atlantic Ocean with two-hundred other men on a ship that could comfortably fit maybe eighty men tops. They stop somewhere in Ohio to meet up with one of Newt’s old Ministry contacts and manage to haggle their way into possession of a portkey thanks to a preview of some of Newt’s manuscript and a promise of a completed, signed edition once the book has been published.

More than a little travel worn after all of the transportation hopping, Newt finally releases Frank back into the Arizona wilds.

It’s with bittersweet happiness that Jacob strokes Frank’s regal head, huffing out a (definitely not tearful), “Good luck, buddy.”

“Thank you so much,” Newt says when it’s his turn, and mutters something else Jacob can’t quite hear, his words lost in the growing roar of thunder. Whatever it is, it has Frank nipping affectionately at Newt’s hair, and then they watch him fly off in an ear-splitting shriek of lightning.

Jacob stares after him for a while, until all that’s left are the hovering gray clouds and the faint smell of rain on the horizon, startling when Newt brushes their hands together. Lacing them, fingers falling easily into familiar notches, Newt smiles at him when he turns to raise an eyebrow.

The trip back to New York City is much less eventful, and thankfully, they’re able to avoid the train transit entirely (thank God for portkeys).

They spend their last couple days with the girls and Credence: eating baked goods both bought and homemade (Jacob and Queenie get into a small bake off, at one point, testing whether strudel made by magic tastes the same as strudel made by hand, and of course everyone benefited from that experiment); sharing stories, from how Jacob and Newt met to Tina and Queenie’s graduations from Ilvermorny; and laughing their way through meals. It’s the most fun Jacob’s had with other people. Well, with other people other than Newt, and it’s nice. It’s something he’s going to miss a great deal.

“You’ll need to come visit us,” Jacob blurts out in the middle of dinner the night before they’re set to leave. A wave of fondness rolls through Jacob’s chest, and he can feel himself flush a bit, not used to putting himself out there quite like this, to people he’s only known for two some weeks, and yet he feels like he’s known them for years. “To England, I mean.”

Tina and Credence look surprised, like they hadn’t expected an invitation, like they might have thought this whole arrangement a temporary thing for Newt and Jacob or something, but Queenie is just beaming, bright and beautiful, her dimples out in full.

“Oh, you charmer,” she says. “Of course we’ll come and visit, honey. You’re family now.”

And if Jacob tears up a little, well, they’re family, and that’s the best thing ever.

On the morning of their departure, two weeks on the dot, as per the President’s stipulation—see, they can listen to directions sometimes—they take a small detour.

“We’ll meet you at the dock in an hour,” Jacob tells a bleary-eyed Tina before they head out, the rest of their merry band still fast asleep in the girls’ bedroom. “Keep an eye on the case for us?”

“Mmm.” She nods into her coffee and pats the rope tied case when he puts it at her feet.

“Thanks.”

Newt’s particularly distracted as they make their way through the city, the early morning crowd pressing in close on all sides (thank God neither of them is claustrophobic). He’s picking at the skin around his nail beds, his mouth pursed and eyes distant, stuck in his thoughts more than likely, considering the blood starting to seep from raw, distressed skin goes unnoticed. Ants crawl under his skin.

Jacob brushes a gentle hand to Newt’s elbow and looks at him questionably when Newt flinches back for a half second, startled.

“Sorry,” Newt says, pushing back into Jacob’s space tighter than before. The ants settle down to a low buzzing. He’s noticed the blood now, sticks the battered finger in his mouth. Jacob’s own goes dry, but he clears his throat and waves the apology away and doesn’t ogle his husband and push him into an alleyway to have his way with him like he wants to. They’re on a time crunch, after all.

“There’s really no reason for you to be nervous,” he says instead.

“Of course there is.”

“I’m pretty sure they’re not ghosts, Newt. I feel like I would have seen them by now if they were.”

“You don’t know that.”

Jacob shoots him a deadpan look and receives an eye roll for his trouble. “Newt—”

“It’s just, Merlin’s beard, everything with my family is all cocked up and I made my peace with that years ago—”

Jacob softens. “Oh sweetheart—”

“—but your family is so important to you, Jacob, so important,” he rushes to finish, “You should hear the way you talk about them, especially your grandmother,”

They’ve stopped now, right there in the middle of the sidewalk, much to everyone else’s apparent irritation. Jacob catches more than a few dirty looks and muttered obscenities thrown their way, but he ignores them. You don’t grow up in New York City without developing a thick skin. Newt just seems oblivious to them, but then, he rarely pays attention to things like that, at least not visibly, thanks in part to his own childhood, Jacob assumes.

It’s something he’s realized before, in moments like these, that they really are something like kindred spirits.

“I just, I don’t want to fuck this up.” And he looks at him with those earnest green eyes, his smile lopsided and tentative and almost sad. Jacob swallows around the sudden lump in his throat and pulls him into a hug, pushing as much warmth and reassurance down the bond as he can.

They separate sooner than he’d like, but muggles are just as bigoted and homophobic as he remembers them being before the war, and he’d rather they not risk either of them getting hurt. So he just pats Newt firmly on the shoulders, lets his hand linger on Newt’s arm a second or two longer than appropriate, and says everything he can’t with the bond. By the way Newt brushes their fingers together briefly, just out of sight thanks to the cuffs of their coats, his smile curling sweet and bashful, the message is received.

Loud and clear.

The cemetery, when they finally meander into it after a quick stop at a local florist for a few small bouquets (at Newt’s insistence), has almost three times as many headstones as the last time he was here, almost a decade ago (before he went off to war, before he met Newt and his entire world got turned upside down and inside out). The headstones almost seem to overlap, most of them crumbling and falling apart. There’s just so many somehow jammed into the small, city designated plot squeezed in between some ancient rotting, brick buildings. It’s unsurprising. What else would he expect? When low income, poverty stricken people have only a few places to bury their dead that’s close enough to visit and allows them to tend to the graves, all at an affordable, cheap cost, then that’s where their dead will go.

The lower class have a lot of dead.

It’s one of the saddest realities Jacob has ever dealt with, but it’s one he’s known since his mother died of consumption when he was five, that he was forced to remember when his father passed not even three years later, and his _babcia_ not even a decade after that.

Newt takes it all in, his eyes wide, and Jacob is reminded that where he buried his dead by hand and shovel in a lightless urban plot, Newt was more used to the mausoleums and well-kept stone work of a family owned plot. There are times when he envies him. Newt’s suffered through his own adversities sure, but this, this wasn’t one of them. And while some may think he should resent him for it, every part of him—from the tiny, childish part of him, the part of him that grew up dirt poor and lonely, where the only real home he had was the one he found in his _babcia_ , to the older war-weary baker—loves him so selfishly that he’s just thankful Newt didn’t have to face this same reality like Jacob did.

There are few others in the cemetery: a mother and her small children, a couple hunched over a small headstone, a solitary man with downcast eyes, but they don’t pay the two of them any mind, consumed in their own griefs and mourning. Jacob steers Newt with a hand at his elbow towards the back corner of the lot to the three headstones crammed all together in a tight row. The markers are old and weathered, a little worse for wear. He can barely read the inscription on his mother’s, the words illegible grooves in the stone, his father’s and _babcia’s_ only slightly better for being a few years newer in comparison. The weeds, at least, have been more or less cleared away, and a wreath of chrysanthemums hang over his _babcia’s_ stone, slightly withered and dull looking, but still there.

He doesn’t know who or why, but he’s grateful. His _babcia_ was fairly popular in life: she didn’t take shit from nobody, but she was soft at heart and her kindness knew no bounds. It’s nice to know that even now, even though he can’t be here for her, for them, the way he wants to be (because when he chose to go with Newt all those years ago, and for all the things he gained, he lost some things too), they’ve got _someone_ here to help out, and that eases the guilt that sits leaden and constant in his gut a little bit.

He takes a deep breath, drops his voice down low and soft. “Hey. I know it’s been a while—I’m so sorry, it’s been so long, but I’m sure you’d understand why. I’ve got someone to introduce to you guys,” without taking his eyes away from the stones, he draws Newt forward until their side by side, “this is Newton Artemis Fido Scamander, wizard, magizoologist, and the love of my life. Newt,” and here he turns his attention to his husband and catches his eye, grinning despite the sadness he can feel lurking in his face, “this is my family.”

And Newt, God damn him, looks at him for a moment and then gives a little bow, all respectful and polite, and says, “Pleasure to meet you.”

And they talk, their voices just above whispers in deference to the dead, in deference to the Statue of Secrecy (it wouldn’t be good to start another city-wide emergency right before they’re set to leave). Jacob tells them all about his life now as the spouse of a handsome magizoloogist and describes some of the more exciting adventures they’ve gotten into over the years. Newt adds the little details he forgets or brief explanations for what things are like Jacob’s dead are real and there and listening attentively, and it’s such a Newt thing to do that he can’t help but lean into him, let him take some of his weight. It’s all very bittersweet, his heart weighing heavy and light all at the same time.

Before they leave, Jacob rests the bouquets against the headstones and drags his fingers over the curved edges of each. “I love you all so much. I’ll try to visit again soon,” he says, his voice a little clogged and raw. He turns and starts trudging away, makes it almost to the gate before he has to stop and look back when he notices Newt isn’t at his side.

Newt’s still in front of the graves, his shoulders hunched, his blue coat billowing out behind him, and he’s saying something, but Jacob can’t hear it. It’s a solemn sight, but Jacob’s endeared, fondness swelling warm in his chest. He doesn’t need to hear to know what he’s probably saying. Newt smiles at Jacob, sad and lovely, as he joins him moments later.

“Thank you,” Newt says quietly, fingers wrapping fire brand hot around Jacob’s wrist for a beat, two, three, before releasing.

He doesn’t have to say anything, can’t even put into words how he feels right now, some convoluted mess of happy and sad and so very tired, so he just pushes it all at Newt along the bond, watching as his partner’s face softens even more, accepts the tightly wound knot of gratefulness and love, love, love he gets in response. “We should probably get going,” Jacob says thickly. He clears his throat. “They’ll be waiting for us by now.”

“Yes.”

They make it half way towards the dock, silent and contemplative and stuck in their own heads, then:

“Do you—do you think they would have liked me?” Newt asks, hesitant. His breath fans out in a misty plume, his eyes directed forward, his expression pressed into something mild, to make it seem, perhaps, that Newt doesn’t care about the answer, but Jacob knows better.

“Oh, Newt, they would have loved you.” Jacob palms the small of Newt’s back and keeps his hand there, thoughts of propriety out the window because it’s not like they’ll be here much longer. He laughs. “I would have had to beat them off with a stick to keep you all to myself.”

 

****

 

“Promise to write. We’ll want to know all about your adventures over the pond, okay honey?” Queenie says, grasping Jacob’s hands firmly in hers, her eyes demanding compliance. Beside him, Newt’s stance has gone a little awkward and tense, not used to such plain overtures of friendship (there may have been Leta, sure, and Jacob, but not really anyone else), but there’s an acceptance there too, like he realizes this is something that will last, that he can count on. Jacob feels the same.

The port is crowded, less so than when they first arrived, but no less loud or diverse. They’ve managed to find some space beside the boarding ramp, away from the stumbling press of people and their very muggle ears.

“Oh, um, of course,” Jacob says on their behalf. He shoots Tina an overly helpless look. She rolls her eyes, grabs her sister lightly by the arm until she pulls back.

“Of course they’ll write to us, Queenie.” Tina turns to look at them, her eyes glinting almost menacingly. “I am an Auror, after all, which would make hunting these boys down easy as pie.”

“You’ll have to keep us updated on the manuscript too,” Credence adds with a slight smile. And already, Jacob can see all the ways he’s changed from the hollow-eyed boy they first met, how better rested and content and more tethered to himself he is. He’s still got a long way to go, in his recovery and his magical learning, but Jacob knows he’ll succeed. He’s got some pretty great friends to help him along the way, if he may say so himself.

Queenie dimples at him, winking.

“Of course,” Newt says and clasps Credence’s shoulder. “We will even hand deliver the finished product, if you want?” he offers, almost hesitantly, less sure than Jacob is in their friends (and who can blame him, considering his past), but getting there. With every smile, every sign of affection, every protective gesture or thing said, every proof and evidence that they can trust in them and be trusted in return. Newt will get there eventually.

“That would be perfect,” Tina says.

“In the meantime, we will be in touch, both for updates,” Newt raises an almost playful eyebrow at the girls, “and to plan your visits to England,” and here he squeezes Credence’s shoulder again. The teen leans into the contact.

“Excellent.”

They stand around in silence for a moment, the five of them exchanging glances and smiles, tinged with some amount of sadness, for parting is never a happy thing, but hopeful for the future, for the adventures and the visits and everything life comes with.

“Final call to board the RMS _Mauretania_!” A man shouts from up the ramp.

“That’ll be us,” Jacob says.

“You have everything?” Queenie asks.

“Not the best time to be asking this, but yes. I believe we do,” Newt says, accepting the rope-tied case from her grasp. The two of them exchange small, tentative smiles. Jacob grins.

They bid them farewell with shaking hands (with Tina and Credence) and hugs (by Queenie), and then they’re off, up the ramp and onto the deck, handing over their MACUSA issued tickets because they wanted to make sure they left on time.

The ramp is retracted, and the ship sets sail, but Jacob draws Newt over to the port side with a hand on his wrist.

They peer over the side, and their friends are still standing there, right where they left them.

“Goodbye!” Jacob shouts because he can, because he’ll miss them, because two weeks and one day is more than enough to establish the kind of comradery and friendship Jacob wants to hold on to and never let go. The three of them jump in slightly hilarious ways, but they’re quick to recover when they glance up and see them, to shout their goodbyes and wave like their lives depend on it, even Tina, whose standards of decorum seem to have temporarily escaped her.

And Jacob looks at them as the ship pulls further and further away, as they grow smaller and smaller, looks at their little group of rag-tag friends, this group of people they accidently stumbled upon in a time of great misfortune and fear and anxiety, but who have proven their worth and loyalty and conviction, these amazingly wonderful people, and his heart swells.

Newt squeezes his hand. Warmth burns slow and fond through him and he beams at Newt, casts a furtive glance about and when he sees no one paying them any mind, he brushes a quick kiss to the side of his mouth, right where his lips have already started to curl.

Oh yes, they’ll be alright in the end, of this he has no doubt.

_END_

**Author's Note:**

> Polish Translations:  
> -babcia means “grandmother,” pronounced “bab-cha”  
> -słoneczko means “sunshine,” which is said to be an endearment (both familial and otherwise), pronounced “swoh-netch-koh”  
> -głupek means “cretin, dolt, fool, idiot,” pronounced “goopek”  
> -pączki: Polish pastries, like a donut, pronounced “pawnch-ki”  
> -karpatka: traditional Polish cream pie, pronounced “kar-pat-kah
> 
> If anyone cares, I’ve included little nuggets you might recognize from my smaller Fantastic Beasts fic: “Scars to Your Beautiful”
> 
> I relied pretty heavily on the Harry Potter wikia and a specific comment section for all of the beasts in the case. Some I added because why wouldn’t Newt have them? And yes, marmites are as legit as they can get without JK’s stamp of approval. The comment section in question, if anyone is interested: http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/63665/what-are-all-the-magical-creatures-beasts-in-newt-scamanders-suitcase
> 
> I’ve messed with the timeline a bit. I’m ignoring the fact that Newt says he’s only been in the field for a year in the movie. When you’re building a guide as vast as Newt’s, I don’t think it’s a horrible estimation that it may take several years to collect enough to fill a tome the likes wizards would allow to be published, and that’s not even counting the editing and stuff lol
> 
> If you haven’t watched Eddie Redmayne teaching Jimmy Fallon the erumpent mating dance, follow the link to save your soul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faXUbSSHeyY&t=202s
> 
> And, if you want to come say hi, you can find me on tumblr here: http://slothy-girl.tumblr.com/
> 
> Research Highlights:  
> -Cocaine was a popular drug used to treat pain in America for most of the 20th century.  
> -Were there bakeries in 1920s Harlem? (Yes, I did look into this. I’m weird like that. Couldn’t find a specific name, but apparently, years later, Morrone’s Bakery came into existence, headed by an amazing Italian lady and her hubs; thus, inspiration sprung)  
> -History of the word “dick” (It’s been used as a kind of insult since 1665ish, but it wasn’t one associated with an actual dick until the 1880s lol; I’m probably pushing it though, but idc, creative license!)  
> -Fourth Avenue is now known as Park Avenue, for those who care to know or want to google map some of the places.  
> -I stand by the idea that if you can regrow bones with a little skele-gro then regrowing appendages in general is only slightly more intricate magic/potions, likely depending on how complex the appendage.  
> -Bobby pins, for those of you who care to know, were invented in 1899.  
> -As I mentioned in the end notes of “In Love and War,” Jacob was a part of the 165th Infantry Regiment of the 42nd Division (aka, the “Rainbow” Division). The 165th Infantry Regiment was originally called the 69th Infantry Regiment and was an Irish heritage unit, which means it was made up of Irish Americans for a good long while. By the time World War 1 rolls around, however, it experienced a number change and non-Irish Americans joined the unit, though, supposedly, without losing that fierce Irish spirit. Apparently, anyone not Irish that joined this unit were considered honorary Irishmen! (read more here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/69th_Infantry_Regiment_(New_York))  
> -Read somewhere that the first parking garage appeared in the U.S. in 1918?? It’s so weird when things come into existence.  
> -According to some gun websites I found, Americans in the Army would have been given a Model 1917 (M1917) revolver, a six-shot sidearm, during World War 1 to supplement the typical M1911. There were two manufactures of this revolver: Colt and Smith & Wesson. While researching this, all I could think of was Supernatural lmao  
> -In Arabic, Jaleela means “a regal woman”  
> -The Killick family, Macdonald family, and the Fawley family are, in fact, real families listed in the HP world! Whoo!  
> -In the 1920s, it would have taken them three days just to reach Arizona from New York by train, according to my research. Nowadays, it takes maybe five to six hours, supposedly? Pretty neat stuff.  
> -“Consumption” was the original name for Tuberculosis  
> -Chrysanthemums mean longevity, joy, and optimism, among a couple other definitions, though the person who put them on Jacob’s babcia’s grave does not know this necessarily. But I do, and that’s what counts buahaha  
> -The RMS Mauretania was an ocean liner (aka passenger ship) finished in 1906. For some time, she was both the largest and the fastest ship until she was usurped. She traveled between the U.S. and England, though I have no idea which ports she stopped at specifically. I just think MACUSA would have wanted the both of them and their case of creatures gone as fast as possible, and what better way than to put them on the fastest passenger ship? lmao Oh well, creative license?
> 
> xoxo


End file.
